Adolescent Attachment Questionnaire: A Brief Assessment of Attachment in Adolescence

The Adolescent Attachment Questionnaire (AAQ), a brief questionnaire to assess attachment characteristics in adolescents, was developed and validated in a large normative sample (n = 691) and a sample of 133 adolescents in psychiatric treatment. The AAQ is a self-report questionnaire consisting of 3 scales of 3 statements each, with Likert-type responses from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The Availability scale assesses the adolescent's confidence in the availability and responsiveness of the attachment figure. TheGoal-Corrected Partnershipscale assesses the extent to which the adolescent considers and is empathetic to the needs and feelings of the attachment figure. The Angry Distress scale taps the amount of anger in the adolescent–parent relationship. All scales demonstrate satisfactory internal reliability and agreement between scores for adolescents (n = 91) from the normative sample who completed the AAQ twice. Adolescents in the clinical sample also completed the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI); the AAQ demonstrated high convergent validity with the AAI.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

1. University of Calgary, Canada Malcolm West ( Professor at the )
2. University of Calgary, Canada M. Sarah Rose ( Associate Professor at the )
3. University of Calgary, Canada Sheila Spreng ( Research Associate at the )
4. University of Virginia, USA Adrienne Sheldon-Keller ( Assistant Professor at the )
5. University of Toronto, USA Kenneth Adam ( Professor at the )

1. Malcolm West