The Child Attachment Interview: a psychometric study of reliability and discriminant validity

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Clinical Psychology
• Attachment Theory

Background:

• Established attachment measures exist for infancy, early childhood, and adulthood.
• A significant "measurement gap" exists for assessing attachment in middle childhood.
• Existing behavioral and representational measures in middle childhood lack sufficient robustness.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a new measure, the Child Attachment Interview (CAI), to address the measurement gap in middle childhood attachment.
• To provide a robust tool for assessing child-parent attachment security and related dimensions.
• To bridge the gap between infancy/early childhood and adult attachment assessment methods.

Main Methods:

• Development of the Child Attachment Interview (CAI), a semi-structured interview for children.
• Coding system informed by the Adult Attachment Interview and Strange Situation Procedure.
• Psychometric evaluation including interrater reliability, test-retest reliability, concurrent, and discriminant validities.

Main Results:

• The CAI yields 4 attachment categories and a continuous measure of attachment security.
• The CAI demonstrated good interrater and test-retest reliability.
• The CAI showed expected correlations with other attachment measures and predicted social functioning.

Conclusions:

• The Child Attachment Interview (CAI) is a reliable and valid measure for assessing child-parent attachment in middle childhood.
• The CAI successfully bridges the measurement gap for attachment in this developmental period.
• Findings support the CAI's utility for both typically developing children and those seeking mental health treatment.