title: Validation of the School-age Assessment of Attachment in a short-term longitudinal study.
abstract: This study tested the validity of the School-aged Assessment of Attachment (SAA) in terms of matches from the well-validated Preschool Assessment of Attachment (PAA) to the SAA 6 months later. It also addressed validity in terms of mental health services and measures of stress, depression and anxiety.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  Children's SAA classifications were predicted to match their 6 months' previous PAA classifications and indicators of maternal, child and family stress. The study used a two-group comparative design, involving normative and clinical children and their mothers.
  
  
  METHODS
  The participants were 50 children between 5.5 and 5.9 years of age. Each child participated with his or her mother in a PAA, and then 6 months later each child responded to the SAA story cards as well as self-report assessments of stress, anxiety and depression.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Concordance of A, B, C and A/C attachment classifications was found between the PAA and SAA in 34 of 48 children. There was a strong relation between referral status (clinical or normative) and both PAA and SAA attachment classifications. In every non-matching case, a normative child had an attachment classification indicative of risk, indicating that the direction of errors was false positives as opposed to false negatives.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This evidence supports the validity and clinical utility of the SAA.
authors.affiliation: Family Relations Institute, USA pmcrittenden@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Patricia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Crittenden
authors.affiliation: Cumbria Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, UK.
authors.forename: Katrina
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Robson
authors.affiliation: Cumbria Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, UK.
authors.forename: Alison
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tooby
mesh_terms: D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003863:Depression / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D009769:Object Attachment; D011581:Psychological Tests; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000523:psychology
keywords: Attachment; DMM; PAA; SAA; school-age children