A PSYCHOMETRIC STUDY OF THE ADULT ATTACHMENT INTERVIEW - RELIABILITY AND DISCRIMINANT VALIDITY

The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) stimulates Ss to retrieve and evaluate attachment-related 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; kappa = .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