Development and Validation of Adult Attachment Scale (AAS)

Description

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Sithara Ashref, K. and Annalakshmi, N. (Department of Psychology, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu)

Attachment is a well-explored construct since John Bowlby’s substantial contributions nearly a half-century ago. Although the attachment research focused on infancy and childhood for many years, there have been recent attempts to broaden the research based on adult relationships. Adult attachment refers to the long-lasting tendency to seek and maintain proximity with preferred individuals to achieve a sense of security. Most self-report scales measuring adult attachment available today focus on romantic attachment, and the subscales do not adequately represent the construct. A new scale is developed here based on Bartholomew’s four-category model of attachment. This study aims to develop and validate an Adult Attachment Scale (AAS). The steps followed in the development of the scale are: literature search and item generation, content validity testing or expert evaluation, and validation survey. A preliminary 112-item scale was developed and tested on a sample of 320 adult individuals (Males=151, Females=169) in the age range of 25 to 45 years. An Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) yielded a four-factor structure, which jointly accounted for 50.42% of the variance. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) demonstrated a good fit for the proposed model. The findings provide evidence for high internal consistency of the 51-item scale. Cronbach’s alpha of the 5-point Likert scale was 0.86, and that of the subscales Secure, Preoccupied, Fearful, and Dismissing were 0.91, 0.94, 0.85, and 0.89, respectively. The scale was also found to have good construct validity in terms of convergent and discriminant validity. The Adult Attachment Scale was found to be a useful and promising measure with good psychometric properties to identify the dominant attachment style of the adults.