Record Details

Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Attachment, 1963-1967

Harvard Dataverse (Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, CCAFS, CIAT, IFPRI, IRRI and WorldFish)

View Archive Info
 
 
Field Value
 
Title Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Attachment, 1963-1967
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/YKAMUT
 
Creator Ainsworth, Mary S.
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description Begun in 1964, the study provided a naturalistic longitudinal field examination of the development of infant-mother attachment throughout the infant’s first year of life. The study also included a controlled laboratory session known as the "Strange Situation" for further exploration of infant attachment behavior.


The main purposes of the study were to (1) identify the various behaviors that may be classed together as attachment behavior and to trace their development, (2) describe how these behaviors become organized and focused on the mother figure, determining the nature of the infant's attachment to her, (3) describe individual differences in the development of attachment behavior and the organization of attachment, (4) ascertain how environmental influences, and in particular the behaviorof the mother figure, affect this development, and (5) investigate the relationship between infant-mother attachment and other aspects of social and cognitive development.


The sample consisted of 26 white, middle-class, infant-mother pairs in intact families from metropolitan Baltimore, Maryland. Sixteen of the babies were boys; ten were girls. Six of the boys but none of the girls were firstborns. In return for participating in the study, the project paid for routine visits to the pediatrician throughout the child's first year. Maternal and infant variables were assessed in both naturalistic and laboratory settings.

The Murray Research Archive holds all original transcribed narrative reports of the 26 subjects. No further waves of data collection are planned. Access to the raw data is denied to participant families in the study.
 
Subject Social Sciences