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Running Head: NEUFELD ADOLESCENT ATTACHMENT QUESTIONNAIRE: Concurrent Validity

Neufeld Adolescent Attachment Questionnaire:
Concurrent Validity

Susan Dafoe-Abbey and David Abbey
Dafoe-Abbey Consultants, Inc. Guelph,
Ontario, Canada















November, 2009

Note: This manuscript was formatted for submission to a refereed journal.

Neufeld Adolescent Attachment

Running Head: NEUFELD ADOLESCENT ATTACHMENT QUESTIONNAIRE
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Summary
Neufeld discusses attachment as a developmental process having six factors (roots): senses, sameness,
belonging and loyalty, significance, love and being known to the attachment figure. Eleven statements
were judged to sample these factors reliably and these formed the Neufeld Adolescent Attachment
questionnaire (NAAQ). Fifty-two adolescents rated how true each of these statements was for them in
relation to their primary care-giver and they also completed the Adolescent Assessment Questionnaire
(AAQ). Both measures of attachment had high reliability and the two questionnaires correlated
significantly. Neither age nor gender of the respondents correlated with their level of attachment.
Neufeld Adolescent Attachment 3

Running Head: NEUFELD ADOLESCENT ATTACHMENT QUESTIONNAIRE
Neufeld and Mate (2005) have used the term attachment to refer to a complex developmental process
which evolves out of the relationship between persons (e.g. infant and parent; lovers) and which has six
roots: sensory awareness, appreciation of sameness, a sense of belonging and loyalty, a sense or belief in
one's significance to the other, feelings of love and ultimately, the sense of being completely know to the
other. This approach to attachment appears to differ considerably from that typically associated with the
work of Bowlby (1969/82), Ainsworth (1985) and others where individuals are seen as developing a style
of attachment to enhance safety and proximity to significant care-givers. These styles are described as
being either secure, avoidant, anxious or disorganized. Based on this model, West, et al. (1998) developed
the Adolescent Attachment Questionnaire (AAQ) which reliably measured the degree of attachment of
adolescent participants in a study of suicide behavior. The present study was undertaken to develop a
measure based on the developmental model outlined above and to compare it to the measure of
attachment derived from the AAQ.

Method

Item creation and selection
Forty parents studying Neufeld's developmental approach (see: www.gordonneufeld.com) suggested
statements which an adolescent might use in describing his or her relationship to a parent. Items were
culled for clarity and with a deliberate intent to represent each of the six roots of attachment detailed by
Neufeld and Mate (2004) by at least one statement. A final set of 11 statements was then submitted to 15
interns/faculty who were thoroughly familiar with the Neufeld approach and they were asked to assign
each statement to one of the six roots. The reliability coefficient (alpha) among judges was .89. These 11
items were accepted as adequately sampling the construct of attachment as defined by Neufeld and they
constitute the Neufeld Adolescent Attachment Questionnaire (NAAQ) (see Appendix).

Adolescent participants
The e-mail address of a number of parent educators was obtained at an annual conference of those
studying with Neufeld. Each volunteered to assist in the development of the NAAQ. Their locales
covered most of the western two-thirds of Canada and were spread through rural, small community and
metropolitan areas. Seventeen of these volunteers obtained the cooperation of one or more adolescents
(Ages 12-18) who were willing to participate in this project. It was introduced to them as a study to
measure how adolescents see their parents.
Neufeld Adolescent Attachment 4

Running Head: NEUFELD ADOLESCENT ATTACHMENT QUESTIONNAIRE
Data collection
The parent educator volunteers were given the option of using either a print or an electronic version of the
AAQ and NAAQ. The adolescent participants were assured their responses would be confidential and to
guarantee this as much as possible those who were completing the print version of the tests were
instructed to place their completed materials in an envelope which they would seal before having it
mailed back to the research team. In the case of those completing the electronic version (see
www.surveymonkey.com) there was no requirement for them to record anything other than their gender
and age.
Through individual email contact with the parent educators we made it clear that it was their
responsibility to protect the anonymity of their volunteers and to adhere to any restrictions concerning
participation of these volunteers (possibly their students) in the research.

A total of 52 adolescents responded (M age = 15 yr, 4 mon; 54% female).
The 11 items of the NAAQ and 9 items of the AAQ were combined into one 20-item questionnaire.
Participants rated each statement using a 4-point Likert scale (False, not at all true; Slightly true; Mainly
true; or Very true).
Results

Age and Gender
Age was not related to total NAAQ scores (r= -.23, p>.05) nor to total AAQ scores (r= -.16, p>.05).
Gender was not correlated with either NAAQ (r= -.11, p>.05) nor AAQ (r=-.19, p>.05).

Reliability and Convergent Validity
When the values of the four response options were optimized (Nishisato, 1980) the internal consistency
reliability (Lord, 1958) was .89 for the Neufeld Adolescent Assessment Questionnaire, .87 for the
Adolescent Assessment Questionnaire and .93 for the entire 20 item questionnaire. The Pearson
correlation between the NAAQ and the AAQ was significant (r=.58, p<.000).
Neufeld Adolescent Attachment 5

Running Head: NEUFELD ADOLESCENT ATTACHMENT QUESTIONNAIRE
Discussion
Both the NAAQ and the AAQ constitute operationalizations of the construct "attachment" and both were
created "following Loevinger's (1957) construct-oriented approach to scale development" in which the
scales are developed from "a priori theoretical considerations rather than through post hoc statistical
manipulations such as factor analysis" (West, et al., 1998, p.663). Whereas the AAQ has three sub-scales
through which different dimensions of attachment are measured the NAAQ treats adolescent attachment
in a more global manner. Part of this is pragmatic since developing a questionnaire which would
adequately sample six different but related roots of attachment would likely require a great many more
items than the few used here.
Given that the NAAQ and the AAQ are derived from different conceptual views of attachment what does
the significant correlation between these two measures signify? In answering this it is quite possible to
see that as the roots of attachment develop so too do the attachment styles of individuals. For example, a
relationship in which there is a failure to support the development of a sense of significance (sampled by
the NAAQ) could easily be seen as one in which anger develops towards the parental figure or as one in
which there is little confidence in the availability and responsiveness of the attachment figure (sampled
by the AAQ).
Our recommendation is that if time permits, both the NAAQ and the AAQ be used in combination. The
resulting questionnaire of 20 items will reliably sample a richer set of adolescent beliefs and perceptions
concerning their attachment to a significant parent or caregiver than has previously been possible.
Neufeld Adolescent Attachment 6

Running Head: NEUFELD ADOLESCENT ATTACHMENT QUESTIONNAIRE
Appendix
Composition of Neufeld Adolescent Attachment Questionnaire
1. I feel most comfortable when I can see, touch or hear my parent.
2. I have deep emotional connections with my parent.
3. I'd put my parent's needs and health before anyone else's.
4. I'd rather take directions from my friends than from my parent. (R)
5. I feel like I'm part of my parent and s/he is part of me; we share so many interests.
6. I have no problem sharing personal secrets with my parent.
7. I can't stand it when one of my parents points out how I'm just like my other parent.(R)
8. My parent and I live in different worlds. S/he just doesn't get me.(R)
9. Nothing gives me more pleasure than to see I've pleased my parent.
10. I'm sometimes embarrassed by how my parent looks or sounds.(R)
11. I'm told I look like my parent(s) and that pleases me. (R)
indicates items with reverse scoring.
Neufeld Adolescent Attachment 7

Running Head: NEUFELD ADOLESCENT ATTACHMENT QUESTIONNAIRE
References
Ainsworth, M.D.S. (1985). Attachments across the life span. Bull. NY. Acad. Med., 61:792-812.
Bowlby, J. (1969/1982). Attachment and loss. Vol. 1: Attachment. Hogarth Press, London; Basic
Books, New York.

Loevinger, J. (1957). Objective tests as instruments of psychological theory. Psychol.
Rep. 3: 635-694.
Lord, F.M. (1958). Some relations between Guttman's principal components of
QUESTIONNAIRE analysis and other psychometric theory. Psychometrika, 23:291-296.
Neufeld, G., and Mate, G., (2004) Hold on to your kids: why parents matter more than peers.
Toronto: Vintage Canada.
Nishisato, S., (1980). Analysis of categorical data: dual scaling and its applications. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press.
West, M., Rose, M.S., Spreng, S., Sheldon-Keller, A., Adam, K. (1998). Adolescent attachment
questionnaire. J. youth and adol., 27: 661-672.
Neufeld Adolescent Attachment

Running Head: NEUFELD ADOLESCENT ATTACHMENT QUESTIONNAIRE
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Author Note

Gordon Neufeld, Director, Growth Concerns; 2155 West 36th Avenue, Vancouver, B.C. Canada,
V6M 1L3.
The authors acknowledge the assistance of 15 volunteer students and faculty associated with the Neufeld
virtual campus, as well as the 17 parent educator volunteers and the 52 adolescents whom they enlisted as
participants in this research.

Electronic mail concerning this research may be sent via Internet to: susan@gordonneufeld.com.