[On the reliability of maternal recall of aspects of child development (author's transl)].

In a pilot study about the rate-rerate-reliability of maternal recall of aspects of child development (pregnancy, childbirth, early childhood development) 100 mothers (mean age 35 years) answered an questionnaire twice. The mean retest interval was 12 days with a standard deviation of 6 days, the mean age of the children (54 boys, 46 girls) was 9 years. The results showed that the rate-rerate-reliability was not ever sufficient especially with regard to clinical relevance of the questions (e. g. in context with the diagnosis of brain damage). Factors influencing the rate-rerate-reliability of anamnestic date (e.g. age, sex, number of children) have been investigated: there was only one significant result. Mothers with less reliable data and great differences between their answers tend to be elder.