Reihaneh Montazeri
1 
, Shirin Hasanpour
2* , Mojgan Mirghafourvand
3 , Mohammad Asghari Jafarabadi
4,5,6 , Manizheh Mostafa Gharehbaghi
7 , Soheila Bani
2 1 Student Research Committee, Department of Midwifery, Nursing and Midwifery Faculty, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran
2 Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran
3 Social Determinants of Health Research Center, Department of Midwifery, Nursing and Midwifery Faculty, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran
4 Cabrini Research, Cabrini Health, VIC 3144, Australia
5 School of Public Health and Preventative Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia
6 Road Traffic Injury Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran
7 Pediatric Health Research Center, Department of Pediatrics and Neonatology, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran
Abstract
Introduction: Infant colic, causing excessive crying, poses anxiety for parents and a challenge for pediatricians and nurses. The Infant Colic Scale (ICS) serves to assess the severity and causal factors of colic. Despite its significance, the psychometric properties of ICS have not been evaluated in the Iranian population. This study seeks to address this gap by assessing the psychometric properties of ICS in Iran.
Methods: A sample of 220 mothers with 2–16-week-old term infants diagnosed with infantile colic was selected through convenience sampling. Following forward and back-translation, the face validity, content validity, and construct validity of ICS were systematically evaluated. Reliability was examined through both internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha) and test-retest stability methods.
Results: Content validity index (CVI) and content validity ratio (CVR) values for ICS were 0.94 and 0.81, respectively. The good fit indices confirmed the validity of the five-factor structure. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) were 0.71 and 0.94, respectively.
Conclusion: The Persian version of ICS is a valid and reliable tool, suitable for assessing infantile colic in the Iranian population. Future studies and clinical practice can utilize this tool to identify major causes of this disorder in the Iranian context.