https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1540-3027
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ABSTRACT
A systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted to evaluate the quality and validity of Family Drawings (FD) with an Attachment-Based Coding System in assessing attachment representations among pre-school and school-age children. A literature search in notable databases identified 645 records, of which 20 were eligible after screening and quality assessment. Results showed: 1) ABCD attachment distribution in community children was: 48% secure, 20% avoidant, 21% ambivalent, 11% disorganized. Security prevailed both in classifications and Fury et al.’ scales. 2) No significant differences according to the cultural background; 3) At-risk/clinical children showed higher insecurity than community ones using scales; 4) Girls were more secure than boys. In conclusion, FD may be a culture-fair method to assess attachment representations in children. Global scales seem more reliable than ABCD classifications for discriminating at-risk and clinical children, but further studies on these groups are needed.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Supplementary material
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed https://doi.org/10.1080/14616734.2021.1991664
Notes
1. None of the eligible studies was a single-case study.
2. Below the age of 18 years in a widely shared definition of a child provided by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1988), even if the majority of studies were expected to include participants aged 6-10 years, and less below 6 or older than 13 years old.
3. Based on Van Ijzendoorn and Kroonenberg (Citation1988).
4. It was not considered informative, nor methodologically appropriate, to compare this community distribution with that reported in the meta-analysis on the SSP, for the following reasons: 1) FD and SSP are different measures, relying on different methods (observational vs. drawing); 2) the meta-analysis is dated 1992, so the temporal gap between the included distributions was considered too large to make a comparison reliably informative; 3) such meta-analyses included only participants from USA, while studies here included involving participants from different countries and cultures.
5. This distribution of international community children was used as a normative distribution in most of the following analyses.
6. Shiakou (Citation2012) provided data for both community and high-risk children, but this author rated Kaplan & Main’s markers and not Fury et al.’s scales, so such data were not included in this analysis.
7. Differences with Tension and Bizarreness are based on eight samples (N = 457), and five samples of western children (n = 143), as mean scores for these scales were not available in Madigan et al. (Citation2003).