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Validating the supervision partnership as a phase of attachment

Klingensmith, Amanda Koehn
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1511731132989254

Abstract Details

2017, PHD, Kent State University, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Psychological Sciences.
The supervision partnership was proposed by Waters and colleagues (1991) to be the last of 8 phases of parent-child attachment in late middle childhood. Previous research (Koehn & Kerns, 2015) has proposed that the supervision partnership consists of three components: availability and accessibility, willingness to communicate, and mutual recognition of the other’s rights. The goal of the present study was to validate the supervision partnership by measuring the three components more precisely and by investigating the link between the supervision partnership and constructs that have proven to be highly related to attachment, such as parenting and peer competence. Another goal of this study was to compare the supervision partnership to other measures of attachment, including narrative coherence, and to evaluate discriminant validity in relation to temperament and IQ. 92 children ages of 10 to 14 (63% male) and one parent (81 mothers and 11 fathers) attended a laboratory visit, where the children participated in an interview and both responded to questionnaires. Modifications were made to the Friends and Family Interview (Steele & Steele, 2005), Security Scale (Kerns et al., 2001), Parental Monitoring Questionnaire (Stattin & Kerr, 2000) and the Making Decisions Questionnaire (Eccles et al., 1991) to measure the supervision partnership. Parenting questionnaires were administered to both children and parents, peer competence and friendship questionnaires were administered to children, parents, and teachers, and a temperament questionnaire was administered to the in-lab parent. Children also completed a computerized verbal intelligence task. Results indicated that the three components of the supervision partnership were significantly related to each other for both mothers and fathers, both when measured by interview and self-report questionnaires. Results also found that the supervision partnership for both mothers and fathers was related to child reports of parental responsiveness and autonomy support, but not to mother reports of maternal parenting. The supervision partnership for both mothers and fathers was also related to child reports of friendship quality, and the supervision partnership for fathers only was related to parent reports of peer problems, but not to teacher reports of peer competence. The supervision partnership for both mothers and fathers, measured by both interview and questionnaire was also related to narrative coherence. The supervision partnership demonstrated discriminant validity by having no significant relationship to temperament. The supervision partnership was modestly related to verbal intelligence, so verbal intelligence was controlled for in all analyses. This study provides some support for the supervision partnership as a phase of attachment in late middle childhood and early adolescence, although additional work is needed to revise measures to more fully capture the mutual recognition of others’ rights component.
Kathryn Kerns, Ph.D. (Advisor)
133 p.
Psychology
attachment; parent-child attachment; middle childhood; adolescence; parenting; peer competence

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Klingensmith, A. K. (2017). Validating the supervision partnership as a phase of attachment [Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1511731132989254

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Klingensmith, Amanda. Validating the supervision partnership as a phase of attachment. 2017. Kent State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1511731132989254.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Klingensmith, Amanda. "Validating the supervision partnership as a phase of attachment." Doctoral dissertation, Kent State University, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1511731132989254

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

kent1511731132989254
354
© 2017, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Kent State University and OhioLINK.