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Neonatal Eating Outcome Assessment: tool development and inter-rater reliability.
Roberta Pineda1,2, Rachel Harris1, Felicia Foci1
1Program in Occupational Therapy, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA.
Acta Paediatrica (Oslo, Norway : 1992)
|October 24, 2017
Summary
The Neonatal Eating Outcome (NEO) Assessment tool was developed and revised for preterm infant feeding. Preliminary results show good to excellent reliability for the total score, indicating its potential for clinical use.
Area of Science:
- Neonatal therapy
- Pediatric feeding disorders
- Clinical assessment tool development
Background:
- Neonatal feeding is complex, especially for preterm infants.
- Standardized tools are needed to assess neonatal eating performance.
- The Neonatal Eating Outcome (NEO) Assessment tool addresses this need.
Purpose of the Study:
- To detail the development and revision process of the NEO Assessment.
- To establish the preliminary inter-rater reliability of the NEO Assessment tool.
Main Methods:
- Literature review and observation of 178 preterm infants' feeding.
- Expert feedback from 11 neonatal therapy feeding specialists for content validity.
- Iterative revisions based on evaluations of 100 infants (50 preterm, 50 full-term).
- Inter-rater reliability testing using version 4 with 6 occupational therapists on 5 video recordings.
Main Results:
- Intraclass correlation for the 'prefeeding' score was 0.71.
- Intraclass correlation for the 'total' score was 0.83.
- Fleiss' Kappa scores for 18 items ranged from slight to moderate agreement.
Conclusions:
- The total score of the NEO Assessment demonstrates good to excellent reliability.
- Items with lower reliability were revised, leading to version 5.
- The NEO Assessment shows promise as a reliable tool for evaluating neonatal feeding.
