Relationship Structures

Relationship-specific attachment: Two scores, one for attachment-related avoidance and the other for attachment-related anxiety, should be computed for each interpersonal target (i.e., mother, father, partner, friend). The avoidance score can be computed by averaging items 1 - 6, while reverse keying items 1, 2, 3, and 4. The anxiety score can be computed by averaging items 7 - 9. These two scores should be computed separately for each relationship target. General or global attachment: To create relationship-general or global attachment scores, simply average the scores computed above across domains. The global avoidance score would be the mean of avoidance with mother, avoidance with father, avoidance with partner, and avoidance with friend. Similarly, the global anxiety score would be the mean of anxiety with mother, anxiety with father, anxiety with partner and anxiety with friend. This particular method, however, weights each realtionship domain equally. This may or may not be advisable, depending on your interests. An alternative is to administer the 9 RS items separately with the instruction for people to rate them with resepct to "important people in their lives," leaving the target purposely vague. http://labs.psychology.illinois.edu/~rcfraley/measures/relstructures.htm