Attachment Interview

USING BARTHOLOMEW'S SEMI-STRUCTURED ATTACHMENT INTERVIEW  

We have used three different semi-structured interviews to assess attachments in adult relationships - the Peer Attachment Interview (PAI),  the Family Attachment Interview (FAI), and more recently, the History of Attachments Interview (HAI).   The PAI focuses on close friendships and past and present romantic relationships.  The FAI focuses on representations of childhood experiences in the family.  The more recent HAI is a modified combination of the previous peer and family attachment interviews.  

In most cases, incorporating the attachment interview into your research will  not be a viable option. Learning to administer, code, and interpret the attachment interview is an involved process and requires a major time commitment. Generally it  takes at least 200 hours to train new coders.  And then, to establish the reliability of new coders, they are asked to code an additional 30 criterion interviews before they can begin coding their own research samples.  Researchers need to be aware that they need at least 2 independent coders to code each interview for a sizeable subsample. Training of new coders takes place in our lab at Simon Fraser University usually over a minimum of one semester.  

Alternatives:

1) Use one or more self-report measures of attachment. We encourage you to do a thorough literature search and consult the work of other   attachment researchers.  Several have designed attachment measures that may well match your needs better than either the Relationship Questionnaire (RQ, Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991) or the Relationship Scales Questionnaire (RSQ, Griffin & Bartholomew, 1994).  

 
• Philip Shaver, Ph.D., University of California at Davis
• Chris Fraley, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Chicago
• Kelly Brennan-Jones, Ph.D., SUNY College at Brockport 
• Nancy Collins, Ph.D., University of California at Santa Barbara
• Jeff Simpson, Ph.D., Texas A&M University
• Everett Waters and Judy Collins, SUNY Stony Brook
• Judith Feeney, Ph.D., University of Queensland

3) Distance training. This is a complex and time consuming process. It is necessary to gather a group of approximately 4 to 6 people who are willing to commit the time and energy. As well, one person needs to be designated as our trainer's contact person and to lead the group. Very briefly, audio tapes and/or transcribed attachment interviews are sent to you. All the usual confidentiality rules apply in using the materials sent to you. Each person in the group tries coding the interviews on their own and then, the group meets to compare their codes to the criterion codes and discuss the process of assigning codes. This practice extends over several months. When you feel ready, reliability tapes are sent to you without the criterion codes. These tapes and your codes are sent back to our lab to assess coders' reliability.

For more information regarding costs and process contact: Dr. Antonia J.Z. Henderson - email: ahenders@sfu.ca 

 
Also see:  Frequently Asked Questions