I am hoping to measure a child's attachment for my dissertation and want to find a concise measure to use with children. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!
Dear Atrina,
Check these papers with references out:
"a follow-up qualitative study was conducted when children were seven to eight years old in which three of the coresiding grandmother-mother dyads were interviewed about their past and current relationships and living arrangements."
Article Three-generation attachment: How grandmothers and mothers co...
Article The influence of women’s attachment style on the chronobiolo...
Www.queendom.com maybe a viable initial assessment tool. One may want to seek Dr. Patricia Abbott or get additional assistance from the website. She introduced PSY 560- Theories of Personality learners to it. Onward!
Hi Artrina,
You might be interested in the Child Attachment Interview (CAI):
Target, M; Fonagy, P; Shmueli-Goetz, Y; (2003) Attachment representations in school-age children: The development of the Child Attachment Interview (CAI). Journal of Child Psychotherapy , 29 (2) 171 - 186. 10.1080/0075417031000138433.And:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5246846_The_Child_Attachment_Interview_A_Psychometric_Study_of_Reliability_and_Discriminant_Validity
Article The Child Attachment Interview: A Psychometric Study of Reli...
The Story Stem procedure is a well recognised tool, or the MacArthur Story Stem Battery is another variant. Sometimes called Narrative Story Stems. There are a few different versions about, almost a divide between the UK and USA! In the former training is through the Anna Freud Centre.
See this link for an example in action:
http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/colleges/medicalschool/departments/psychiatry/Research/developmentalresearch/Documents/Story%20stem%20in%20preschoolers.pdf
For my research, I am using a scale measuring the degree of preoccupied attachment style and avoidant attachment style.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ernest_Hodges/publication/229780571_Preoccupied_and_Avoidant_Coping_during_Middle_Childhood/links/00b7d52951a27accfd000000.pdf
Article Preoccupied and Avoidant Coping During Middle Childhood
Artrina, I would recommend a narrative approach. See the work of Inge Bretherton based on Story Stem procedures (e.g.: Bretherton, Ridgeway, & Cassidy, 1990; Bretherton, & Winn, 1995; Emde, Wolf & Oppenheim, 2003; Granot & Mayseless, 1998; Golby, Page, & Bretherton, 1995; 2001; Heller, 2000; Robinson, Mantz-Simmons, MacFies, & the MacArthur Narrative Working Group, 1995). You can also see the narrative approach of Harriet S. Waters on script knowledge of secure base phenomena. See papers:(http://www.psychology.sunysb.edu/attachment/measures/content/waters_waters_ahd_2006.pdf) and (http://portal.psychology.uoguelph.ca/faculty/hennig/conf/waters_98_attach-scripts_JExCP.pdf). Best regards
I use the Attachment Story Completion Test (ASCT) developed by Inge Bretherton (see references cited above) and modified for use with middle-aged children by Prof Kathy Kerns at Kent State University, USA.
Why not considering the M-CAST : Manchester Child Attachment Story Task ? A story completiton test for 4-8 years old that you code on video footage. Good luck !
The Attachment Q-Sort (Waters & Dean, 1985) and the Main-Cassidy-System (Main & Cassidy, 1988) are two observation based procedures for children until early school age. Maybe they are suitable as well for the age your aiming at. But I must admit that the Main-Cassidy-System as in some way similar to the Strange-Situation (but easier to administer and fitting for the higher age).
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Psychology
- Developmental Psychology