Introducing the Attachment Style Interview (ASI)
20 December 2017
- Attachment theory is influential in both research and practice, providing explanations of individuals’ capacities to achieve good support, close partner relationships and effective parenting of their own and other’s offspring. The ASI is a standardised interview tool, which assesses support-based attachment styles in adults and is adapted for workers in out-of-home care (OOHC) and child protection contexts. The ASI-AD is an adolescent version.
- The ASI provides an objective, evidence-based assessment tool that has gone through careful checks to show it is consistent and reliable in its use. The scores do not depend on the opinion of the professional undertaking the interview, but on a series of rules and rating procedures all outlined in a training manual and verified in research contexts. The ASI’s reliability and validity has been tested in a number of sites including several cross-cultural studies. It has proved to be a reputable interview tool for assessing current social and psychological factors around relationships that highlight risk or resilience in relation to family life.
- The ASI is used with parents & carers in adoption/fostering and child protection services as a means of predicting parents’ and carers’ support in relation to anticipated need over the course of crises that may arise with any of their children. It also aids understanding of parents’ current support network, quality of partner relationship, other close relationships and ability to relate, thus helping assess resilience and capacity to provide a stable family context for the child.
- The ASI-AD assesses a young person’s support-seeking behaviour and attitudes to relationships, such as mistrust and fear of rejection, in order to determine their overall attachment style. The support section covers parents and peers as well as other adults. The ASI-AD is used to assess young people in residential care, and can be used as part of an evidence-based assessment to inform care and planning for young people in need and those at risk of coming into care or already in the care system.
