Validity and Reliability of the Attachment Insecur

Authors: I B Wissink C Colonnesi G J J M Stams M Hoeve J J Asscher M J Noom N Polderman M G KellaertKnol

Publish Date: 2015/08/14

Volume: 9, Issue: 2, Pages: 533-550

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Abstract

The Attachment Insecurity Screening Inventory AISI 2–5 years is a parentreport questionnaire for assessing attachment insecurity in preschoolers Validity and reliability of the AISI 2–5 years were examined in a general sample n = 429 and in a clinical sample n = 71 Confirmatory factor analysis CFA confirmed a threefactor model of avoidant ambivalent/resistant and disorganized attachment and one higherorder factor of total attachment insecurity Multigroup CFA indicated measurement invariance across mothers and fathers and across the general and clinical population sample Reliability coefficients were generally found to be good We found partial support for convergent validity in associations between AISIscores and observed attachment AQS Concurrent validity was supported by associations between AISIscores and observed parental sensitivity MBQS and parentreported psychopathology SDQ Finally the AISI discriminated well between children from the general and from the clinical sample We argue that both research and practice could benefit from the AISI as there is now a prospect of quickly reliably and validly screening for attachment insecurity in preschool aged children Based on this information help can be offered timely and subsequently the prevention of attachment related problems of children can be strengthenedOne of the most important developmental challenges in infancy and early childhood is building secure childparent attachment relationships as attachment security provides a secure base from which young children can explore the physical and social environment There is however empirical evidence showing that 38  of the children from the general population have insecure attachment relationships Van IJzendoorn et al 1999 This percentage is even higher in clinical samples Dozier et al 2001 Van IJzendoorn et al 1999 The present study aims to examine the validity and reliability of the Attachment Insecurity Screening Inventory AISI 2–5 years which is a parental report questionnaire to screen for attachment insecurity in children from 2 to 5 years of ageAccording to Bowlby 1988 p 26 attachment concerns ‘any form of behaviour that results in a person attaining or maintaining proximity to some other clearly identified individual who is conceived of as better able to cope with the world’ The forms of attachment security and insecurity are determined by the strategy of maintaining proximity to the caregiver and are responses to the sensitivity of the parent see metaanalyses by Atkinson et al 2000 De Wolff and Van IJzendoorn 1997 Van IJzendoorn and De Wolff 1997 Secure children Type B use their consistently sensitive parents both as a secure haven and secure base finding a balance between ‘proximity seeking’ and ‘exploration of the environment’ Ainsworth et al 1978 Cassidy and Marvin 1992 Main and Solomon 1986 1990 Insecure children do not show this secure response pattern but show one of three insecure patterns InsecureAvoidant Type A InsecureAmbivalent or resistant Type C or InsecureDisorganized Type D InsecureAvoidant children Type A minimize attachment behaviors which is an insecure but still organized strategy to keep proximity to a consistently insensitive and rejecting parent InsecureAmbivalent or resistant children Type C maximize attachment behaviors which is an insecureorganized strategy to keep proximity to a parent who is inconsistently sensitive InsecureDisorganized children Type D do not have an organized strategy to keep proximity to their caregiver They display seemingly nongoal directed and disoriented behavior in infancy experiencing a conflict between seeking proximity and fearing to approach the caregiver Disorganized children may show combinations of insecure strategies such as avoidance and ambivalence/resistance or use controlling strategies in response to their parents during preschool age These controlling behaviors may be punitive and aggressive or care giving being overly solicitous and nurturing with the parent in order to guide the parent’s behavior Vallance 2004 Disorganized or controlling attachment is considered to be a response to extremely insensitive caregivers who are frightening hostile and abusive punitive subtype or frightened and helpless caregiving subtype It has been shown that parent–child interaction is most disrupted in preschoolers classified as disorganized compared with children designated as ambivalent/resistant or avoidant Moss et al 1998 which concurs with research findings showing that disorganized children should be considered as the most insecure O’Connor and Zeanah 2003Attachment insecurity constitutes a serious risk for the development of psychopathology That is an insecure childparent attachment relationship has been shown to be associated with both internalizing Brumariu and Kerns 2010 Colonnesi et al 2011 Goos et al 2013 Groh et al 2012 Madigan et al 2012 and externalizing problem behavior Fearon et al 2010 Hoeve et al 2012 Fortunately there is also a vast body of empirical evidence showing that attachment insecurity can be treated effectively BakermansKranenburg et al 2003 2005 Cornell and Hamrin 2008 Wimmer et al 2009 Zeanah et al 2005To date however there is no quick and easy instrument available for providing reliable and valid data on individual child differences in early attachment insecurity Reliable and valid observation instruments that are being used now to assess attachment security are the Strange Situation procedure Ainsworth et al 1978 and the Attachment Qsort AQS Van IJzendoorn et al 2004 Waters and Deane 1985 The Strange Situation Ainsworth et al 1978 Main and Solomon 1986 1990 is considered the ‘golden standard’ to assess attachment in young children It is a laboratory procedure to assess four patterns of secure type B and insecure type A C D attachment in 1 to 2yearolds although an adapted version has been developed to assess attachment in 2 to 5 year olds Cassidy and Marvin 1992 The caregiver mostly one of the parents and child are observed in a room with a one way glass during eight episodes of approximately 3 min each In episode three a stranger enters the room in episode four the caregiver leaves the child and the stranger alone in episode five the caregiver returns and the stranger leaves in episode six the caregiver leaves and the child is left to play alone in episode seven the stranger returns and in episode eight the caregiver returns and the stranger leaves Throughout the procedure the child’s responses are observed and coded in order to assess secure avoidant ambivalent and disorganized attachmentAn alternative method to validly and reliably assess attachment in young children is the attachment Qsort AQS Van IJzendoorn et al 2004 Waters and Deane 1985 which is used to observe child attachment outside the laboratory that is in the home The AQS contains 90 cards describing attachment behaviors of children between 1 and 5 years old A welltrained observer ranks the cards into nine piles from least to most descriptive of the child after several hours of observation Subsequently the Qsort is compared with the Qsort of a prototypical secure child rated by experts the higher the correlation the more secure the child is whereas lower scores are indicative of attachment insecurity In fact the attachment Qsort assesses the degree of attachment insecurity instead of the four patterns of attachment that can be derived from the Strange Situation procedureBoth the Strange Situation procedure and the AQS are time consuming require intensive training and cannot provide information on sensitivity and specificity ie the proportion of actual positives and negatives that are correctly identified as such respectively And as said there is no quick and easy instrument available for providing reliable and valid data on individual child differences in early attachment insecurity To fill this gap the Attachment Insecurity Screening Inventory AISI 2–5 years was developed Polderman and KellaertKnoll 2008 Colonnesi et al 2012 The Attachment Insecurity Screening Inventory is a parentreport questionnaire assessing attachment insecurity of the child The item pool of the AISI was created by 1 studying recent literature on attachment 2 examining existing instruments to assess attachment in young children and 3 conducting interviews with therapists who deliver attachmentbased intervention We argue that both research and clinical practice would benefit from a brief caregiverreport measure to reliably and validly screen for attachment insecurity in preschool aged children The AISI 2–5 contains 20 items covering three subscales avoidant ambivalent/resistant and disorganized attachment insecurity The total score of the questionnaire can be considered as an indication of total attachment insecurity

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