Attachment theory describes how people form, maintain, and regulate close emotional bonds. It originates in the work of John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth and is used to understand security, anxiety, avoidance, closeness, dependence, and separation in important relationships.
In adult psychology, attachment is usually described either through styles, such as secure, anxious, avoidant, and fearful, or through continuous dimensions, most often attachment-related anxiety and avoidance.
Adult attachment measures describe how people experience closeness, dependence, security, anxiety, and avoidance in intimate relationships. The following measures assess attachment dimensions, especially anxiety and avoidance.
The Experiences in Close Relationships Revised (ECR-R, ECR-SF) measures attachment-related anxiety and avoidance in close romantic relationships. It is one of the central self-report instruments in contemporary attachment research.
The Multi-Item Measure of Adult Romantic Attachment (MIMARA) also operationalizes romantic attachment through dimensional scales, offering an alternative formulation of the same underlying constructs.
The Measure of Attachment Qualities (MAQ) assesses attachment-related qualities in close relationships, including security, avoidance, ambivalence, and related interpersonal tendencies.
The Attachment Style Questionnaire (ASQ, ASQ-SF) assess several dimensions of adult attachment, including confidence, discomfort with closeness, need for approval, and preoccupation with relationships.
The Adult Attachment Scale (RAAS) assesses adult attachment through dimensions such as closeness, dependence, and anxiety.
The Adult Attachment Questionnaire (AAQ) measures adult attachment patterns using scales that reflect both relational security and insecurity.
The State Adult Attachment Measure (SAAM) assesses momentary attachment-related feelings and expectations, including state security, anxiety, and avoidance.
The following measures describe attachment through styles or categorical profiles.
The first single-choice attachment classification proposed by Hazan and Shaver introduced the three-style model – secure, anxious, and avoidant – into adult attachment research.
The Relationships Questionnaire (RQ) provides a brief categorical assessment of four attachment styles: secure, preoccupied, dismissing, and fearful.
The Relationship Scales Questionnaire (RSQ) assesses attachment patterns using multiple subscales that can be interpreted in relation to both attachment styles and underlying dimensions.
The Trent Relationship Scales Questionnaire (T-RSQ) is a revised version of the RSQ designed to improve the measurement of adult attachment styles and dimensions.
Attachment is not necessarily the same across all relationships. These measures describe attachment to romantic partners, parents, peers, or other close figures, especially in adolescence and young adulthood.
The Experiences in Close Relationships – Relationship Structures (ECR-RS) assesses attachment patterns across multiple targets, such as romantic partners, friends, mothers, and fathers.
The Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA) focuses on adolescents and young adults, measuring perceived attachment to parents and peers.
⇒ Measures focused primarily on infant, child, or parent-child attachment are considered in the Parenting domain.
Self-report questionnaires are only one approach to attachment assessment. Interviews, narrative methods, and observational procedures evaluate attachment representations, coherence, behavior, and relationship patterns more indirectly.
The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) assesses attachment through autobiographical narratives about early relationships. 💬 interview
The Attachment Style Interview (ASI) assesses current relational patterns in a semi-structured format. 💬 interview
The Adult Attachment Projective Picture System (AAP) uses narrative responses to attachment-related scenes to assess attachment representations. 💬 interview
Classical developmental methods, such as the Strange Situation Procedure and the Attachment Q-Sort, assess attachment through observation.
Some instruments apply attachment theory to more disorganized, vulnerable, or maladaptive relationship patterns.
The Adult Disorganized Attachment Scale (ADA) targets disorganized patterns of attachment, which are associated with inconsistent or contradictory interpersonal strategies.
The Vulnerable Attachment Style Questionnaire (VASQ) assesses insecure and vulnerable attachment patterns, particularly in relation to psychological distress and interpersonal sensitivity.
○ Popular attachment tests simplify attachment theory into a small number of recognizable styles.
The The Attachment Quiz by Annie Chen is a self-reflection tool based on common attachment-style categories.
The Attachment Style Quiz by Thais Gibson is another tool used to introduce attachment patterns in accessible language.
The Levine & Heller Attachment Style Questionnaire is an adapted version of ECR-R.
⇒ Love. Romantic attachment overlaps with love, infatuation, intimacy, and commitment, but attachment theory focuses more specifically on security, anxiety, avoidance, dependence, and separation.
⇒ Relationship dynamics. Attachment patterns influence relationship satisfaction, conflict, trust, dependence, communication, and stability.
⇒ Relational emotions. Attachment insecurity is closely linked to jealousy, fear of rejection, suspicion, abandonment concerns, and other emotions that arise in close relationships.
⇒ Parenting. Early attachment is closely connected with caregiving, parental sensitivity, parent-child interaction, and the child's sense of security with caregivers.
⇒ Anxiety. Attachment anxiety overlaps with fears of separation, abandonment, rejection, and loss of emotional security.
Attachment assessment is best understood as a family of complementary approaches rather than a single method. Dimensional measures, style-based classifications, state measures, interviews, observational procedures, and clinical instruments each capture different aspects of how people experience and regulate close relationships.
These approaches are related but not interchangeable. Attachment scores may reflect different combinations of security, anxiety, avoidance, dependence, fear of separation, emotional regulation, relationship history, and current interpersonal context.
For this reason, attachment instruments should be interpreted as part of a broader relationship profile rather than as a single fixed label. Their main value lies in describing patterns of closeness, distance, trust, dependence, and strategies for managing emotional security in important relationships.