Ainsworth's 'strange situation' may not be practical for all psychologists to use if they want to find out the attachment type of a person, particularly if this is an older child or adult. An alternative is to use Main et al 1985 Adult Attachment Interview (AAI), this consists of fifteen questions asked to adults in the space of an hour that are open ended allowing the adult to elaborate on past experiences or what they would do in a specific situation, from this Main et al found four main attachment types amongst the adults they studied.
Insecure-dismissing: Where all attachment relationships are dismissed and disregarded
Autonomous-Secure: Where all attachment experiences are recalled openly with ease
Insecure-Preoccupied: These individuals struggle to please their parents
Unresolved- These individuals have experienced an attachment trauma or the loss of an attachment
These types can be used to experiment attachment types in adults, which may be more efficient to use, Ainsworth's study is more longitudinal, however it is incapable in explaining adult attachment types and whether these are different to that of infants. Main et al also found that the insecure-dismissing and insecure-preoccupied type adults tended to have insecure children in the strange situation condition, this shows that a mothers own childhood and attachment experiences can affect the way she interacts with her child determining the attachment type the infant has. This may also support the view that attachment types are biological, if the attachment type of the mother and infant are the same and if both were to be separated at the birth, however this is hard to generalise as the environment is the basis for forming attachments with other people.
Another way to study the attachment types of a child is through an experiment devised by Waters et al 1995, this is where 90 behavioural descriptors are shown on cards and these are then sorted into 9 piles, ranking them from 1-9, 1 being least like the child's behaviours and 9 being most like the child. This is determined through interviews and observations of children. Peterson et al 1998 also concluded that this corresponded with the classifications in the 'strange situation' by Ainsworth making it more reputable.
