A Reliability Generalization Study of Select Measures of Adult Attachment Style

Abstract

The concept of attachment has been discussed and debated in the psychological literature for quite some time. More recently, the concept of attachment has been extended to adults, and several measures that purport to measure attachment style have been developed. The purpose of the present study was to provide a reliability generalization study of five of the most prominent adult attachment style measures. Reliability generalization, a relatively new meta-analytic reliability procedure, was used to (a) identify the typical reliability of scores across instruments and studies and (b) examine sources of measurement error across instruments and studies. Results from this investigation of 154 previously published research studies indicated that the average score reliability across studies varied considerably across instruments and subscales. Implications for the use of self-report measures of adult attachment style are offered.