Aaq - Adolescent Attachment Questionnaire

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Running Head: NEUFELD ADOLESCENT ATTACHMENT QUESTIONNAIRE: Concurrent Validity

Neufeld Adolescent Adolescent Attachment Attachment Questionnaire: Questionnaire: Concurrent Validity

Susan Dafoe-Abbey and David Abbey Dafoe-Abbey Consultants, Inc. Guelph, Ontario, Canada

November, 2009

Note: This manuscript was formatted for submission to a refereed journal.

Neufeld Adolescent Attachment Running Head: NEUFELD ADOLESCENT ATTACHMENT QUESTIONNAIRE

Summary Neufeld discusses attachment as a developmental process having six factors (roots): senses, sameness, belonging and loyalty, significance, love and being known to the attachment figure. Eleven statements were judged to sample these factors reliably and these formed the Neufeld Adolescent Attachment questionnaire (NAAQ). Fifty-two adolescents rated how true each of these statements was for them in relation to their primary care-giver and they also completed the Adolescent Assessment Questionnaire (AAQ). Both measures of attachment had high reliability and the two questionnaires correlated significantly. Neither age nor gender of the respondents correlated with their level of attachment.

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Neufeld Adolescent Attachment 3 Running Head: NEUFELD ADOLESCENT ATTACHMENT QUESTIONNAIRE

Neufeld and Mate (2005) have used the term attachment to refer to a complex developmental process which evolves out of the relationship between persons (e.g. infant and parent; lovers) and which has six roots: sensory awareness, appreciation of sameness, a sense of belonging and loyalty, a sense or belief in one's significance to the other, feelings of love and ultimately, the sense of being completely know to the other. This approach to attachment appears to differ considerably from that typically associated with the work of Bowlby (1969/82), Ainsworth (1985) and others where individuals are seen as developing a style of attachment to enhance safety and proximity to significant care-givers. These styles are described as being either secure, avoidant, anxious or disorganized. Based on this model, West, et al. (1998) developed the Adolescent Attachment Questionnaire (AAQ) which reliably measured the degree of attachment of adolescent participants in a study of suicide behavior. The present study was undertaken to develop a measure based on the developmental model outlined above and to compare it to the measure of attachment derived from the AAQ. Method Item creation and selection Forty parents studying Neufeld's developmental approach (see: www.gordonneufeld.com) suggested statements which an adolescent might use in describing his or her relationship to a parent. Items were culled for clarity and with a deliberate intent to represent each of the six roots of attachment detailed by Neufeld and Mate (2004) by at least one statement. A final set of 11 statements was then submitted to 15 interns/faculty who were thoroughly familiar with the Neufeld approach and they were asked to assign each statement to one of the six roots. The reliability coefficient (alpha) among judges was .89. These 11 items were accepted as adequately sampling the construct of attachment as defined by Neufeld and they constitute the Neufeld Adolescent Attachment Questionnaire (NAAQ) (see Appendix). Adolescent participants The e-mail address of a number of parent educators was obtained at an annual conference of those studying with Neufeld. Each volunteered to assist in the development of the NAAQ. Their locales covered most of the western two-thirds of Canada and were spread through rural, small community and metropolitan areas. Seventeen of these volunteers obtained the cooperation of one or more adolescents (Ages 12-18) who were willing to participate in this project. It was introduced to them as a study to measure how adolescents see their parents.


Data collection The parent educator volunteers were given the option of using either a print or an electronic version of the AAQ and NAAQ. The adolescent participants were assured their responses would be confidential and to guarantee this as much as possible those who were completing the print version of the tests were instructed to place their completed materials in an envelope which they would seal before having it mailed back to the research team. In the case of those completing the electronic version (see www.surveymonkey.com) there was no requirement for them to record anything other than their gender and age. Through individual email contact with the parent educators we made it clear that it was their responsibility to protect the anonymity of their volunteers and to adhere to any restrictions concerning participation of these volunteers (possibly their students) in the research. A total of 52 adolescents responded (M age = 15 yr, 4 mon; 54% female). The 11 items of the NAAQ and 9 items of the AAQ were combined into one 20-item questionnaire. Participants rated each statement using a 4-point Likert scale (False, not at all true; Slightly true; Mainly true; or Very true). Results Age and Gender Age was not related to total NAAQ scores (r= -.23, p>.05) nor to total AAQ scores (r= -.16, p>.05). Gender was not correlated with either NAAQ (r= -.11, p>.05) nor AAQ (r=-.19, p>.05). Reliability and Convergent Validity When the values of the four response options were optimized (Nishisato, 1980) the internal consistency reliability (Lord, 1958) was .89 for the Neufeld Adolescent Assessment Questionnaire, .87 for the Adolescent Assessment Questionnaire and .93 for the entire 20 item questionnaire. The Pearson correlation between the NAAQ and the AAQ was significant (r=.58, p<.000).


Discussion Both the NAAQ and the AAQ constitute operationalizations of the construct "attachment" and both were created "following Loevinger's (1957) construct-oriented approach to scale development" in which the scales are developed from "a priori theoretical considerations rather than through post hoc statistical manipulations such as factor analysis" (West, et al., 1998, p.663). Whereas the AAQ has three sub-scales through which different dimensions of attachment are measured the NAAQ treats adolescent attachment in a more global manner. Part of this is pragmatic since developing a questionnaire which would adequately sample six different but related roots of attachment would likely require a great many more items than the few used here. Given that the NAAQ and the AAQ are derived from different conceptual views of attachment what does the significant correlation between these two measures signify? In answering this it is quite possible to see that as the roots of attachment develop so too do the attachment styles of individuals. For example, a relationship in which there is a failure to support the development of a sense of significance (sampled by the NAAQ) could easily be seen as one in which anger develops towards the parental figure or as one in which there is little confidence in the availability and responsiveness of the attachment figure (sampled by the AAQ). Our recommendation is that if time permits, both the NAAQ and the AAQ be used in combination. The resulting questionnaire of 20 items will reliably sample a richer set of adolescent beliefs and perceptions concerning their attachment to a significant parent or caregiver than has previously been possible.


Appendix Composition of Neufeld Adolescent Attachment Questionnaire 1. I feel most comfortable when I can see, touch or hear my parent. 2. I have deep emotional connections with my parent. 3. I'd put my parent's needs and health before anyone else's. 4. I'd rather take directions from my friends than from my parent. (R) 5. I feel like I'm part of my parent and s/he is part of me; we share so many interests. 6. I have no problem sharing personal secrets with my parent. 7. I can't stand it when one of my parents points out how I'm just like my other parent.(R) 8. My parent and I live in different worlds. S/he just doesn't get me.(R) 9. Nothing gives me more pleasure than to see I've pleased my parent. 10. I'm sometimes embarrassed by how my parent looks or sounds.(R) 11. I'm told I look like my parent(s) and that pleases me. (R) indicates items with reverse scoring.


References Ainsworth, M.D.S. (1985). Attachments across the life span. Bull. NY. Acad. Med., 61:792-812. Bowlby, J. (1969/1982). Attachment and loss. Vol. 1: Attachment. Hogarth Press, London; Basic Books, New York. Loevinger, J. (1957). Objective tests as instruments of psychological theory. Psychol. Rep. 3: 635-694. Lord, F.M. (1958). Some relations between Guttman's principal components of QUESTIONNAIRE analysis and other psychometric theory. Psychometrika, 23:291-296. Neufeld, G., and Mate, G., (2004) Hold on to your kids: why parents matter more than peers. Toronto: Vintage Canada. Nishisato, S., (1980). Analysis of categorical data: dual scaling and its applications. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. West, M., Rose, M.S., Spreng, S., Sheldon-Keller, A., Adam, K. (1998). Adolescent attachment questionnaire. J. youth and adol., 27: 661-672.

Neufeld Adolescent Attachment

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Running Head: NEUFELD ADOLESCENT ATTACHMENT QUESTIONNAIRE

Author Note Gordon Neufeld, Director, Growth Concerns; 2155 West 36th Avenue, Vancouver, B.C. Canada, V6M 1L3. The authors acknowledge the assistance of 15 volunteer students and faculty associated with the Neufeld virtual campus, as well as the 17 parent educator volunteers and the 52 adolescents whom they enlisted as participants in this research. Electronic mail concerning this research may be sent via Internet to : [email protected].

Aaq - Adolescent Attachment Questionnaire

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