Original scientific paper
Validation of the attachment assessment scale for toddlers during their adaptation time in nursery
Sanja Tatalović Vorkapić
orcid.org/0000-0002-9170-8455
; Učiteljski fakultet, Sveučilišta u Rijeci, Rijeka, Hrvatska
Željka Čargonja-Pregelj
Ivana Mihić
Abstract
The period of adjustment of children in preschool institutions, especially nursery schools, is a difficult and stressful time for most children. How long it will take and what kind of adjustment reactions the child will show depends on the emotional bonds that the child has previously developed. Considering the great lack of adequate measurement in this research field, the main aim of this study was to adapt and validate the Attachment Assessment Scale for toddlers, and to examine the quality of their attachment in the early phase of adaptation to the nursery.
The study was conducted on a sample of 271 child in preschool institutions in Rijeka, Opatija, Lovran, Krk, and Baška. Educators observed the behaviour of children in the first fourteen days of their attendance in the nursery school. A questionnaire was given that was adapted and validated, on the basis of previous research, toddlers’ patterns of attachment (Mihic, 2010). Five of seven previously determined factors from the original questionnaire (Mihic, 2010) were found in this study. This finding confirmed the possibility of upgrading the questionnaire, in order to expand the possibility of better assessing and diagnosing the possible positive and negative aspects of developing the quality of toddlers’ attachment and the determination to develop safe, ambivalent, uncertain, or disorganizing forms of attachment. The behavioural patterns called: Avoidance, Support, Mother-child closeness, Rejection and Cold distance, have explained 57.945% of the total variance and showed satisfactory reliability levels in the range from 0.740 to 0.892. The results for attachment quality showed that the majority of children in this study were certainly attached to their primary parental figure and went through a normal course of adjustment to nursery school. In addition to the analysis of relations with different personal and situational variables, the findings are discussed in terms of the importance of attachment theory for quality work in the nursery school.
Keywords
toddlers; preschool teachers; adaptation to nursery school; attachment; assessment scale; validation
Hrčak ID:
150103
URI
Publication date:
28.12.2015.
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