Testing the incremental value of a separate measure for secure attachment relative to a measure for attachment anxiety and avoidance: A study in middle childhood and early adolescence.

This study addressed the question whether there is a need to add an explicit measure of security when operationalizing parent-child attachment in terms of anxiety and avoidance. Both dimensional (i.e., regression analyses) and person-centered analyses (i.e., cluster analysis) are used in this study (N = 276, 53% boys, mean age = 10.66) to examine the incremental value of a scale for attachment security (in this study, the Security Scale) in addition to a scale for attachment anxiety and avoidance (in this study, the Experiences in Close Relationships Scale-Revised – Child version; ECR-RC). The present results suggest that an assessment of anxious and avoidant attachment (using the ECR-RC) may suffice to capture the quality of parent-child attachment in middle childhood and early adolescence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)
Source: European Journal of Psychological Assessment - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Source Type: research