The Child Attachment Interview
The Child Attachment Interview (CAI) was developed in an attempt to address the ‘measurement gap’ as a narrative-based assessment designed to elicit children’s internal working models of attachment relationships.
The CAI calls on children to describe and reflect on their current attachment relationships and experiences. While the interview was intended for use with 8–12-year-olds, it has been used extensively with adolescents too. The appeal of the CAI lies in its diverse application as both a research and clinical assessment tool and consequently it has been widely used in a variety of settings both in the UK and abroad (see for example, Scott, Briskman, Woolgar, Humayun, & O’Connor, 2011; Venta, Shmueli-Goetz, & Sharp, 2014). The CAI has been developed and refined as more observations and data on different populations have been gathered and more finely tuned questions became accessible for investigation.