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Child Studies (Evaluation: (This was the first meta-analysis of attachment…
Child Studies
Evaluation:
This was the first meta-analysis of attachment in Italy, so the scientific community could benefit into the insights into the distribution of attachment. Both for children and adults.
Comparisons of the SSP could only be made using 1992 data from America; this raises questions about the contemporaneous validity of the data comparison. it does not address the father - child attachment types within Italy and America.
There is the potential for experimenter bias as Cassiba et al were using a database and specifying search words so they may have dismissed studies that they felt were inappropriate. Even though meta-analysis tend to be time saving and cost effective they do involve an element of subjectivity . However, they did include unpublished studies.
The researchers were careful that studies on child-parent attachment only used the gold standard of the SSP and that adult attachments were only assessed using interviews that were coded for inter-rater reliability of over 0.75. This allowed accurate comparisons of studies to be made.
Results
The prevalence of the secure attachment was the most common type in all 8 countries. A significant cultural difference is that in countries such as Germany (individualistic), a high proportion of anxious-avoidant attachment was found. this could be due to German parents placing a high value on independence so children in the SSP show less distress. In contrast, in Japan (collectivistic) a high level of resistant attachment was evident. This could be due to the high value placed on dependency within the culture.
The variation of attachment types was 1 and a half times greater within cultures than between cultures. One of the german samples was as different from another german sample as it was from a US sample.
Conclusions:
The universal consistency in attachment could be due to the media which spread ideas about parenting.
Secure attachment illustrates there seems to be a key factor to raising a child in all cultures and countries. this supports the notion that secure attachment is prerequisite for healthy social and emotional development
Evaluation:
The SSP was developed by an American researcher based on the observations of American children. Therefore, it could have ethnocentric bias, reflecting the norms of American society. The test suggests that attachment is related to anxiety on separation and in doing so it assumes that that behaviour has the same meaning in all cultures. Insecure attachment was seen commonly in Japan but here it could be said Ainsworth was imposing western values on another culture.
The majority of data came from individualistic culture. Only one study's data was used to represent China compared to 18 from America. Also, many of the samples were small or biased on middle income families which cannot represent the whole culture. Also, urban rather than rural families were assessed so it is an oversimplification to view a country as a single culture as there is great variation within countries.
Procedure
It was a meta-analysis that came from studies using psycINFO which is database of academic journals using the key words 'italian' 'attachment' and 'strange situation procedure'. Other research studies were obtained from Italian journals, publications and doctoral dissertations.
There were 627 P's from 17 studies that used the SSP and 2258 P's from 50 studies that used the Adult Attachment Interview. Statistical tests were used to compare the data.
Results:
non-clinical Italian children were classified as 33% type A, 53 % type B and 14% type C. Compared to the USA sample, the Italian children showed more avoidant attachment.
Clinical and at-risk children showed attachment type A of 40%, type B of 32% and type C of 28%. There was a higher proportion of insecure attachment and fewer secure attachment among Italian at risk children than the USA
Conclusion
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Both clinical and non-clinical groups showed an over representation of insecure attachments compared to the USA but this cultural difference could be due to differences in child rearing practices
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Procedure:
It was a meta-analysis of data collected from 32 separate studies carried out in 8 different countries and represented 1990 SSP. All studies used the SSP. When selecting data they excluded studies that included children with special education needs in their sample and any studies with overlapping samples and any studies where the children were over 24 months.
Cassiba et al
Aim: to investigate if the majority of Italian children and adults were classified as having a secure attachment. Also, to see whether Italian adults would have a higher percentage of unresolved attachment.