The Adult Attachment Scale (AAS) was officially developed in 1990 but built on the earlier work of Hazen & Shaver (1987) and Levy & Davis (1988). The scale was developed by decomposing the original three prototypical descriptions (Hazen & Shaver, 1987) into a series of 18 items.
The scale consists of 18 items scored on a 5 point likert-type scale. It measures adult attachment styles named “Secure”, “Anxious” and “Avoidant”, defined as:
• Secure = high scores on Close and Depend subscales, low score on Anxiety subscale
• Anxious = high score on Anxiety subscale, moderate scores on Close and Depend subscales
• Avoidant = low scores on Close, Depend, and Anxiety subscales
The 18 items that compromise the measure are as follows:
Note: (S)= Secure, (Av)= Avoidant, (Ax)= Anxious/Ambivalent
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Authors
Nancy L. Collins, Stephen J. Read
Reliability and Validity
Collins & Read (1990) reported Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of .69 for Close, .75 for Depend, and .72 for Anxiety. Test-retest correlations for a 2-month period were .68 for Close, .71 for Depend, and .52 for Anxiety.
Description and Scoring Information
To obtain permission to use this scale
The authors of this scale give researchers, students, and clinicians permission to use this scale for research, educational, and clinical purposes, and to adapt or translate the scale into new languages as needed. Please do not contact the authors for these standard uses. However, if you are interested in using the scale for commercial purposes, please contact the authors for permission.
Administration, Analysis and Reporting
Statistics Solutions consists of a team of professional methodologists and statisticians that can assist the student or professional researcher in administering the survey instrument, collecting the data, conducting the analyses and explaining the results.
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Dissertations Using the Adult Attachment Scale
Below is a list of dissertations using the AAS. The full version of these dissertations can be found using ProQuest.
Sirota, T. H. (1997). A comparison of adult attachment style dimensions between women who have gay or bisexual fathers and women who have heterosexual fathers. New York University).
References
Collins, N. L., & Read, S. J. (1990). Adult attachment, working models, and relationship quality in dating couples. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58(4), 644-663.