Attachment to God: The Attachment to God Inventory, Tests of Working Model Correspondence, and an Exploration of Faith Group Differences

Abstract

Recent theoretical and empirical work by Lee Kirkpatrick and others has suggested that relationship with God can be fruitfully described as an attachment bond. However, this literature has been limited by the lack of a sound theoretical and psychometric scale that operationalizes the attachment to God construct. Toward that end, the paper presents data from three samples, two college and one community sample, describing the psychometric properties of the Attachment to God Inventory (AGI) as well as providing tests of the correspondence and compensation hypotheses. In general, the AGI subscales of Avoidance of Intimacy and Anxiety about Abandonment display good factor structure, internal consistency, and construct validity. Comparisons of the AGI with adulthood attachment measures appear to support, albeit weakly, a correspondence between working models of romantic others and God.

Religious Attachment and the Sense of Life Purpose among Emerging Adults

“…Some researchers treat attachment to God as discrete categories (e.g., avoidant, anxious, secure) (Kirkpatrick and Shaver 1992), while others measure attachment security as a single dimension (Belavich and Pargament 2002;Calvert 2010). Each conceptualization comes with its own set of limitations, despite many improvements that attempt to capture a broad spectrum of characteristics hypothesized to be related to attachment to God (Beck and McDonald 2004). Given the data available in the NSYR, the current study operationalizes attachment to the divine as reported closeness to God.…”

Protocol for a Cluster Randomised Controlled Trial to Compare the “Taste & See” Programme—A Church-Based Programme to Develop a Healthy Relationship with Food—With a Wait-List Control

“…Attitude towards a deity will be measured using the ATG-S 9 (Wood et al 2010). Attachment to God, which has been commonly used and associated with disordered eating (Homan and Boyatzis 2010) and body image (Homan 2012), will be measured using the Attachment to God Scale (Rowatt and Kirkpatrick 2002) this is briefer than the Attachment to God Inventory (Beck and McDonald 2004). With specific reference to struggles with food and weight, religious coping will be measured using the brief RCOPE (Pargament et al 2011).…”

Between God and self: exploring the attachment to God and authenticity/inauthenticity tendencies of South African Christian youths

“…To assess the tendencies of God-attachment and self-authenticity among the participants (n = 100), the 28-items Attachment to God Inventory (AGI) (Beck & McDonald, 2004) and the 12-items AS were used to generate statistical data from the participants. The participants completed the survey questionnaires and measures in the following order:…”

“…The Attachment to God Inventory (AGI) (Beck & McDonald, 2004). The 28 items of the AGI measure attachment levels of anxiety with God and avoidance of God.…”

“…Attachment anxiety with God indicate a possible abandonment of God or a perceived feeling of strong fear and uneasiness with God, while attachment-avoidance with God reflects an attendant compulsive self-reliance and a tendency to evade intimacy with God. Higher scores in this test reflect higher levels of each construct (Beck & McDonald, 2004). Each of the God-attachment anxiety or avoidance dimension contains 14 items, which Gibson (2007, p. 241) rated as the strongest measure for exploring AG behaviours.…”