Self-report questionnaires are useful and valid instruments to assess individuals’ attachment representations (Bosmans & Kerns, 2015). Yet, few measures are available for school age children, and surprisingly little is known about the psychometric properties of extant questionnaires designed to assess attachment in middle childhood.
The current dissertation set out to address this lacuna and was guided by three interrelated aims.
The first aim was to psychometrically evaluate existing self-report measures of attachment in middle childhood. To this end, across the first section of this dissertation, we tested the psychometric properties of three widely used self-report questionnaires to assess attachment in middle childhood: the Security Scale (SS) (Chapter 2), the short form of the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised Child version (ECR-RC) (Chapter 3), and the Preoccupied and Avoidant Coping Questionnaire (PACQ) (Chapter 4 – Study 1). We also conducted a comparative study across the PACQ and the short version of the ECR-RC (Chapter 4 – Study 2).
Taken together, our results indicate that the SS, ECR-RC and PACQ are psychometrically sound instruments to assess attachment representations of mother and father among Italian children. However, further studies are needed to clarify which specific aspects of insecure attachment are measured by the PACQ-preoccupied and ECR-RC anxiety subscales.
The second aim was to test and compare the psychometric properties of Harter (‘Some kids…other kids’) and Likert response formats as applied to attachment questionnaires designed for use in middle childhood (Chapter 5 – Study 2). Despite empirical evidence suggests that item response format plays a critical role in obtaining reliable and valid data (e.g., Borgers et al., 2004), less attention has been devoted to investigating which of the currently used response formats fits best with children’s cognitive characteristics and may adequately capture attachment representations in this developmental phase. In the attachment field, questionnaires designed for school age children use the “some/other” format (Harter, 2012), whereas questionnaires designed for other developmental periods (i.e., adolescence and adulthood) and subsequently adapted for use in middle childhood follow the Likert format. To address this issue, we focused on the aforementioned SS and on the short form of the ECR-RC by creating additional versions of each scale with both Harter and Likert response formats, and then compared the four versions by evaluating their psychometric properties in terms of factorial structure and criterion validity. Our findings suggest that both the ECR-RC and the SS could be used with either response format. However, because the Harter’s format carries an impersonal structure it may facilitate children’s sharing their feeling regarding their relationship with parents.
The third aim was to develop an age-appropriate questionnaire – namely the Attachment in Middle Childhood Questionnaire (AMCQ) for children between 8 and 12 years of age (Chapter 6 – Study 1 and Study 2) – based on existing measures, and to examine its underlying psychometric properties in terms of factor structure, invariance across age and gender, and concurrent and convergent validity (Chapter 6 – Study 3). The questionnaire comprised two dimensions, i.e., anxiety (5 Items) and avoidance (5 Items), as well as a supplementary scale assessing perceived security (5 Items). Results provided evidence for the factorial validity and structural invariance of its underlying construct across age and gender; concurrent and convergent validity were also supported. Overall, the AMCQ is a promising tool to assess attachment in school-aged children in the Italian context, demonstrating good psychometric properties. Further research is warranted to examine its psychometric properties in other countries to establish cross-cultural invariance
