Psychometric evaluation of adult attachment measures on Turkish samples and a cross-cultural comparison

In recent years, adult attachment styles (secure, fearful, preoccupied, and dismissing) have been widely investigated within the framework of four-cat egory model (Bartholomew and Horowitz, 1991). In three consecutive studies, the reliability and validity of two commonly used measures of attachment s tyles were examined on the Turkish sample and a cross-cultural comparison w ith a U.S. sample was made. Results of the Study I revealed that both the s ingle and multi-item measures of attachment styles (Relationships Questionn aire; Re and Relationships Scales Questionnaire; RSQ) have satisfactory lev el of reliability, stability and convergent validity. However these two mea sures did not correspond bl classifying respondents into the four attachmen t groups in an acceptable degree. Study 2, first, replicated the results of study I and second, demonstrated that the four attachment styles can be su fficiently identified among Turkish students. Supporting the construct vali dity of the attachment scales, findings indicated that the four attachment styles were organized around the two underlying dimensions of attachment (m odels of self and others), and they were related to the outcome variables e mployed in the study consistent with the assumptions of attachment, theory. The final study permitted a comparison of Turkish sample with American stu dents from the perspective of four- category model. It was found that altho ugh the attachment scales had compatible psychometric quality in both cultu res, the RSQ was relatively more consistent than the Re across the two samp les. Furthermore, cultural differences in attachment styles were found espe cially among the insecure styles and students with preoccupied styles in th e Turkish sample and those with dismissing and fearful styles in the Americ an sample seemed to be overrepresented Findings were discussed in the light of attachment literature regarding the measurement issues and cross-cultur al differences.