A Pilot Study of Developing an Infant Sucking Tester Instrument

Objectives: most preterm infants experience oral feeding disorder. sucking is the mostappropriate way for oral feeding, but it may be immature in preterm infants. regarding theincreased risk of feeding problems in preterm infants, investigating and monitoring theirsucking patterns to present appropriate and timely intervention is recommendedthe current research aimed to report the design of an instrument for measuring the suctionpressure in preterm infants through a pilot study. we also checked the validity and reliabilityof the instrument.methods: a pilot study was conducted to measure the validity and reliability of this instrument.first, the instrument was developed, and in the next step, discriminant validity, test-retestreliability, and comparison in terms of sex were investigated by measuring the suction pressureof 20 full-term and 15 preterm infants. the mann-whitney u test and wilcoxon test were usedto establish the discriminant validity, comparison in terms of sex, and test-retest reliability inspss v. 23 software.results: two groups showed a significant difference in the suction pressure (p<0.001) tosupport the discriminant validity of the instrument. we obtained satisfactory values for thetest-retest reliability in two groups (r=0.97, p<0.001). boys and girls did not significantly differbetween full-term (p=0.9) and preterm infants groups (p=0.5).discussion: performing the pilot study on 35 infants through an infant sucker tester proved theinstrument’s discriminant validity and test-retest reliability. however, conducting the studieswith a larger sample size is essential to make this instrument available commercially.