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Information on the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised (ECR-R) Adult Attachment Questionnaire R. Chris Fraley University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised (ECR-R) questionnaire is a revised version of Brennan, Clark, and Shaver's (1998) Experiences in Close Relationships (ECR) questionnaire. The items on the ECR-R were selected using techniques based on Item Response Theory, but were selected from the same item pool as those from the ECR. Both the ECR and the ECR-R are designed to assess individual differences with respect to attachment-related anxiety (i.e., the extent to which people are insecure vs. secure about the extent to which their partner's availability and responsiveness) and attachment-related avoidance (i.e., the extent to which people are uncomfortable being close to others vs. secure depending on others). This web page is designed to answer some frequently asked questions about the ECR-R. More detailed information about the ECR-R can be found in the original article in which the questionnaire was published: Fraley, R. C., Waller, N. G., & Brennan, K. A. (2000). An item-response theory analysis of self-report measures of adult attachment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 350-365.If you would like a copy of this article, please contact me. If you would like to download a PDF version of the article, you can do so on the "publications" page of my web site. For more general information on the measurement of adult attachment via self-report, please see the on-line document, Self-Report Measures of Adult Attachment, (and the references therein) by Phil Shaver and Chris Fraley. For more information on the two-dimensional model of individual differences in adult attachment, please see the following overview of theory and research on adult attachment: A Brief Overview of Adult Attachment Theory and Research by Chris Fraley. Frequently asked questions about the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised measure Q: Where can I find the ECR-R items? A. You can find the ECR-R items in the Fraley, Waller, and Brennan (2000) JPSP paper. The items can also be easily copied-and-pasted into MS Word via the page at this link. Q: Is the ECR-R different from the on-line Close Relationships Questionnaire / Attachment Style Questionnaire that I saw on the Internet? A. The ECR-R is the same instrument as the 'Close Relationships Questionnaire' or the 'Attachment Style Questionnaire' at http://www.web-research-design.net/cgi-bin/crq/crq.pl. Update Dec 9, 2005: The "Attachment Style Questionnaire" that is on-line is now a modified version of the original ECR-R. Approximately 16 of the items are from the original instrument; the remainder are selected at random from an item bank of over 300 items in an attempt to identify items that can be used to improve the scales. Thus, please do not simply copy and paste the items from the online questionnaire under the assumption that those are the complete set of ECR-R items. Moreover, please do not use the online questionnaire as a method for scoring your own paper-and-pencil tests. Q: How do I score the ECR-R? A. For each person, average (or sum) the scores for all items within each scale. The items, separated by scale, are listed below. Note: It is important to "reverse key" the items denoted with an * before averaging item responses. Items such as "I rarely worry about my partner leaving me" should be keyed as counting against scores on anxiety, not for scores on anxiety. The easiest way to do this is to subtract 8 from each reverse keyed item (thus, a high score of 6 becomes a low score of 2, for example) before averaging them. You can find more information on scoring at this link If you are familiar with IRT, you can also use the item parameter estimates reported in our 2000 article (and below) to scale people with respect to anxiety and avoidance. This is most easily accomplished by using an existing IRT program for graded response data, such as MULTILOG. Q: Do you know where I can find information on the reliabilty and validity of the ECR-R scales? A. The commonly used estimate of internal consistency reliability tends to be .90 or higher for the two ECR-R scales. As discussed in the 2000 article, IRT analyses suggest that the reliability might be a bit less at the secure end of both dimensions than at the insecure end of the dimensions. Further information about the reliability and validity of the scales can be found in the following publication(s): Sibley, C. G., & Liu, J. H. (2004). Short-term temporal stability and factor structure of the revised experiences in close relationships (ECR-R) measure of adult attachment. Personality and Individual Differences, 36, 969-975.If you are interested in IRT-based estimates of the ECR-R items, the alpha (a) and beta (b) values for each item are included in Tables 2 and 3 of the Fraley, Waller, and Brennan article. I have reproduced these tables below for convenience. Note: The alpha value in IRT is a lot like the alpha estimate of reliability in standard test theory. The major difference is that alpha is estimated at each point along the latent continuum. This allows one to see how the reliability of the scores may vary as a function of how secure or insecure an individual is. The graphs of these conditional alphas are provided in the Fraley, Waller, and Brennan (2000) article. The more common alphas tend to exceed .90 for each scale. Items
for the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised inventory, and item
response theory parameter estimates.
IRT item parameter estimates for the 18-item ECR-R attachment subscale of Avoidance
Q: Do you have any norms for the ECR-R? A: There are some ECR-R norms available based on people who have taken the ECR-R on-line. The following statistics are based on a sample of over 22,000 people (78% female) with an average age of 24 (SD = 10). Fifteen percent of the sample was married. Here are some of the summary statistics:
Note. The values for age represent the predicted values for variable ages based on a regression model that models avoidance and anxiety as a function of age in years. The equation for avoidance is 22.759 + .007*AGE (r = .06). The equation for anxiety is 3.892 - .001*AGE (r = -.08). In the full sample, the correlation between the avoidance and anxiety scales was .41. Q: Do I need permission to use these scales in my research? A: No. The scales were published in a scientific journal for use in the public domain. You do not need to contact any of the authors for permission to use these scales in non-commercial research. You may not use the scales for commercial purposes without permission. Q: The ECR-R items appear to be written for people in romantic relationships. Can I modify the items to make them relevant to other kinds of relationships, such as parental or sibling relationships? A: You should feel free to modify the items in any way that seems appropriate to you. Many people have modified the items for their research purposes and you should feel free to do the same. We have recently developed a new (and shorter) version of the ECR-R that can be used for a variety of relational targets. To take an online version of that test, please visit this link: ECR-Relationship Structures. Additional information about this measure is available here. Q: Is there a way to categorize people into a specific attachment category (i.e., secure, fearful, dismissing, preoccupied) on the basis of their scores on the two ECR-R dimensions? A: Over the years I have been very interested in the question of whether attachment styles are categorical variables (i.e., matters of kind) or continuous variables (i.e., matters of degree). Taxometric analyses on multiple samples suggest that variation in attachment is best modeled with dimensions rather than categories (see Fraley & Waller, 1998; Fraley & Spieker, 2003a, 2003b). If you classify people on the basis of their scores, you are necessarily reducing the precision of measurement and lowering your statistical power. I would strongly recommend against classifying people on the basis of their continuous scores. A number of people have written me and asked how to analyze attachment data using the two attachment dimensions. I would recommend using multiple regression to analyze the standard kinds of data that psychologists collect (i.e., the kinds of data that, if you were to use categories, would call for ANOVA). For example, if you're trying to predict a continuous dependent variable, such as relationship satisfaction, from the attachment dimensions, you could estimate the parameters of the following regression equation: Relationship Satisfaction = (constant/intercept) + Beta1*Anxiety + Beta2*Avoidance + (residual variance). Using this general analytic framework allows you to study attachment in a continuous manner. Importantly, it also allows you to interpret your results in a manner that is conceptually aligned with Bartholomew's four attachment prototypes (e.g., secure, fearful, preoccupied, dismissing)--but in a way that allows other regions of the two-dimensional space to be accurately represented. The table below is designed to illustrate the way different patterns of regression coefficients (e.g., beta weights) can be interpreted with respect to various attachment patterns.
Note: It is also possible to test the interaction between attachment-related anxiety and avoidance, although, in my experience, the interaction rarely explains much variance in dependent variables. It is necessary to include the interaction term if you are predicting a pattern of results that cannot be modeled as an additive combination of the two dimensions. For example, if you predict that highly secure people will be high on variable X and that highly dismissing, fearful, and preoccupied people will be low on variable X, it is necessary to include an interaction term to characterize such a pattern because, by definition, this pattern cannot be represented fully as an additive combiation of anxiety and avoidance. For examples of this usage, see Fraley & Bonanno (2004). Q: I have heard that there is an on-line measure based on the ECR-R where students can take the ECR and have their scores on the two dimensions plotted for them. A: Yes, the site is located at http://www.yourPersonality.net/. The site also provides information on attachment theory more generally, and can be used for educational purposes, or just for fun (or both). (Important note added Sept 2003: I have recently learned that some people are "scoring" paper-and-pencil versions of the ECR-R by entering their participants' responses into the web page and allowing the web page to score the responses. Please note that the web page automatically randomizes the order of the questions. In other words, each time you load the web page, the items will appear in a different order. If you're simply entering in responses without attending to the order in which the items appear, you will get useless results. Also, sometimes the page only uses some items from the ECR-R; other items are rotated in on an experimental basis. The online test is not meant to be a mechanism by which other researchers can assess attachment for their research purposes. It is an educational tool and one that we use for experimental purposes to collect basic data on item functioning.) Q: What are the advantages of using the ECR-R over the ECR? A: We are not sure if there are any advantages at this point. In our article, we were using Item Response Theory to illustrate how theoretical inferences about important developmental issues can vary as a function of the item response properties of the measurement scale--properties that researchers rarely consider. Our analyses convinced me (Fraley) that the attachment scales suffer from some critical problems (i.e., they don't assess "security" with as much precision as "insecurity"), but, ultimately, this is a problem with the item pool available for scale construction. In other words, the ECR and the ECR-R are based on the same item pool, and, consequently, the ECR-R can only improve measurement to a minor degree. We believe that future research must attempt to assess the secure region with more precision. Once these improvements have been made, we hope to recommend the new instrument (the ECR-RR???) over either of the existing ECR derivatives. In the meantime, I suspect that the ECR and the ECR-R are, for all practical purposes, identical measures of attachment. We hope people will continue to improve the measurement of adult attachment patterns. Document last updated: July 23, 2005; Dec 10, 2005; Dec 2010. Thanks to Kathy Carnelley for spotting a typo. :-) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Self-Report Measures of Adult Attachment