Stability and discriminant validity of the adult attachment interview: a psychometric study in young Israeli adults.

Abstract

Fifty-nine male and female Israeli students were interviewed twice by 2 different interviewers at 3month intervals to assess the Adult Attachment Interview's (AAI; C. George, N. Kaplan, & M. Main, 1985) test-retest reliability and the effects of the interviewers on the interview itself as well as its subsequent classification. Various memory measures were used to obtain a wide range of information about subjects' memory abilities. Information was also obtained from the students' records about various intelligence-related skills. Results showed high degree of interjudge and test-retest reliabilities, irrespective of interviewers. The classifications on the AAI were not found to be associated with nonattachment-related memory and intelligence abilities. The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI; George, Kaplan, & Main, 1985) has recently come into increasing use in connection with the study of intergenerational transmission of attachment. The AAI represents an attempt to assess current mental representation by adults of their childhood attachment experiences (Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985). Even when applied before the birth of a child, the AAI has been found to predict the quality of infant-parent attachment relationships (Benoit & Parker, in press; Fonagy, Steele, & Steele, 1991; Radojevic, 1992; Ward & Carlson, in press). In a meta-analysis of 18 studies involving a total of 854 families, Van Uzendoorn (in press) found that there is a substantial overall effect size for the relation between adult-attachment security and infant-attachment security (combined r = .47). The psychometric properties of the AAI have received much less attention (Bakermans-Kranenburg & Van Uzendoorn, 1993; Waters et al., 1993), although the precise meaning of developmental measures can only be established by psychometric