The Validation of the Supervision Partnership Using the FFI

• In Event: 1-085 - The Nature of Attachment Representations in Early Adolescence: Longitudinal Roots and New Theoretical Directions

Integrative Statement

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. Koehn & Kerns (2015) elaborated the concept by suggesting that the supervision partnership consists of three components: availability and accessibility of the attachment figure, willingness to communicate, and mutual recognition of the other’s rights. Although Koehn and Kerns provided preliminary evidence for this conceptualization, their measures were limited to questionnaires. The goal of the present study was to validate the supervision partnership by measuring the three components more precisely with the Friends and Family Interview (FFI; Steele & Steele, 2005), to test model fit, and to investigate the link between the supervision partnership and parenting, a construct that has proven to be highly related to attachment. We hypothesized that the three components of the supervision partnership would demonstrate good model fit in a CFA analysis. We also hypothesized that the three components would be significantly related to each other for both mothers and fathers. Finally, we hypothesized that the supervision partnership would be related to parental autonomy support and responsiveness for both mothers and fathers.
A sample of 92 children 10 to 14 years of age (63% of sample male; 83% White) and one parent (81 mothers and 11 fathers) attended a laboratory visit. Children participated in the FFI and children and parents responded to the child and parent versions of the CRPBI (Barber et al., 2005), POPS (Grolnick, et al., 1991), and Autonomy Granting Scale (Silk, et al., 2003). Modifications were made to the FFI to measure the additional components of the supervision partnership by adding additional questions about communication and decision making. Trained coders scored the interview (reliabilities .81 to .92). Parenting questionnaires were administered to both children and parents. Children also completed a computerized verbal intelligence task to test discriminant validity.
Results provided support for the supervision partnership components as part of the same latent construct, as model fit indices were moderate to good (see Figure 1). The three components of the supervision partnership were significantly correlated to each other for both mothers and fathers, with correlations ranging from .60 to .86. The three components of the supervision partnership were also significantly correlated with narrative coherence (coded from the FFI) for both mothers and fathers, with correlations ranging from .37 to .83. 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 (see Table 1). The supervision partnership was modestly related to verbal intelligence, so verbal intelligence was controlled for in all analyses, and the results did not change.
This study provides support for the supervision partnership as a phase of attachment in late middle childhood and early adolescence. The findings suggests that attachment in early adolescence is best captured as a cooperative partnership marked by open communication and joint decision making in addition to use of the parent as a safe haven and secure base.

Authors

• Amanda Koehn Klingensmith, Kent State University
  Presenting Author

• Kathryn A. Kerns, Kent State University
  Non-Presenting Author