A psychometric evaluation of the tripartite attachment battery

The Tripartite Attachment Battery (TAB) includes scales assessing attachment security, organized insecurity (i.e., anxiety and avoidance), and disorganized attachment. This recently developed series of measures provides expanded options for assessing attachment characteristics (e.g., a scale that directly assesses attachment security) and may improve the assessment of attachment anxiety and avoidance by including items capturing the secondary attachment strategies associated with them (viz., hyperactivation and deactivation). The present study utilized a community sample (N = 386) to evaluate and refine these scales. Factor analyses were conducted to: (a) examine the dimensionality of each TAB scale, and (b) guide the creation of empirically-derived subscales. The Secure Attachment Scale and the Organized Insecurity Scale were multidimensional. The Disorganized Attachment Scale was unidimensional. Most of the empirically-derived measures had internal consistency and test-retest reliability levels in the range considered adequate or better. Their correlations with a measure of psychopathology provided preliminary support for their construct validity. The TAB scales are promising measures of adult attachment characteristics. Further investigation of their psychometric properties is warranted.