A psychometric study of the Adult Attachment Interview: Reliability and discriminant validity.

Abstract

The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) stimulates Ss to retrieve and evaluate attachmentrelated autobiographical memories and has increasingly been used to predict the quality of parent—child interactions and infant—parent attachment relationships. Its reliability and discriminant validity, however, have not yet been examined. In this study, 83 mothers were interviewed twice, 2 months apart, by different interviewers so that the instrument's test—retest reliability and potential interviewer effects can be evaluated. To examine the AAI's discriminant validity, we administered tests for autobiographical memory, intelligence, and social desirability. The reliability of the AAI classifications was quite high over time (78% on the level of the 3 main categories; κ = .63) and across interviewers. The unresolved category was less stable. The AAI classifications turned out to be independent of non-attachment-related memory, verbal and performance intelligence, and social desirability.

Cites (45)

1. Logic and Conversation
   Grice, H. P. · 1975 · Speech Acts
2. Untitled work
   1978 · Medical Entomology and Zoology
3. A new scale of social desirability independent of psychopathology.
   Crowne, Douglas P., Marlowe, David · 1960 · Journal of Consulting Psychology
4. Multiple regression in behavioral research
   Fred N. Kerlinger, Elazar J. Pedhazur · 1973 · Medical Entomology and Zoology
5. Security in Infancy, Childhood, and Adulthood: A Move to the Level of Representation
   Main, Mary, Kaplan, Nancy, Cassidy, Jude · 1985 · Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development
6. The Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ) and its correlates
   Broadbent, D. E., Cooper, P. F., FitzGerald, P., Parkes, K. R. · 1982 · British Journal of Clinical Psychology
7. Patterns of attachment: (550432011-004)
   Ainsworth, Mary D. · 1985 · PsycEXTRA Dataset
8. Memory and cognition
   Walter Kintsch · 1977 · Medical Entomology and Zoology
9. The Measurement and Appraisal of Adult Intelligence
   Webster, A. Stanley, Wechsler, David · 1958 · The Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science
10. Attachment Across the Life Cycle
    Stevenson-Hinde, Joan, Marris, Peter · 1991 · Taylor & Francis eBooks

Show all 45 references

Cited by (463)

1. The construction of autobiographical memories in the self-memory system
   Conway, Martin A., Pleydell-Pearce, Christopher W. · 2000 · Psychological Review
2. Adult attachment representations, parental responsiveness, and infant attachment: a meta-analysis on the predictive validity of the adult attachment interview
   van IJzendoorn, Marinus H. · 1995 · Psychological Bulletin
3. The Insecure/Ambivalent Pattern of Attachment: Theory and Research
   Jude Anne Cassidy, Lisa J. Berlin · 1994 · Child Development
4. The relation of attachment status, psychiatric classification, and response to psychotherapy.
   Fonagy, Peter, Leigh, Tom, Steele, Miriam, Steele, Howard, Kennedy, Roger, Mattoon, Gretta, Target, Mary, Gerber, Andrew · 1996 · Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology
5. The first 10,000 Adult Attachment Interviews: distributions of adult attachment representations in clinical and non-clinical groups
   Bakermans-Kranenburg, Marian J., van IJzendoorn, Marinus H. · 2009 · Attachment & Human Development

See all 463

Related (9)

1. Stability and discriminant validity of the adult attachment interview: a psychometric study in young Israeli adults.
   Sagi, Abraham, van IJzendoorn, Marinus H., Scharf, Miri, Koren-Karie, Nina, Joels, Tirtsa, Mayseless, Ofra · 1994 · Developmental Psychology
2. Discriminant Validity of the Adult Attachment Interview
   Judith A. Crowell, Everett Waters, Dominique Treboux, Elizabeth O’Connor, Christina Colon-Downs, Olga Feider, Barbara J. Golby, Germán Posada · 1996 · Child Development
3. A psychometric study of the child attachment interview: Reliability and validity.
   Tania Pilley · 1999 · UCL Discovery (University College London)
4. Adult personality characteristics and family relationships : the development and validation of an interview-based assessment technique
   Howard Steele · 1991 · UCL Discovery (University College London)
5. Content validity and reliability of the adult attachment interview in a sample of Moroccan young adults
   Fatima Attar, Khadija Ouadi · 2023 · World Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews

See all