Identifying the Best-Fitting Factor Structure of the Experience of Close Relations - Revised in a Scandinavian Example

Abstract

The aim of this study was to enhance the understanding of cultural and sample differences in the assessment of attachment by examining the factor structure of the Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised (ECR-R). The ECR-R is a self-report measure of adult romantic attachment dimensions. The present study used a Danish sample with the purpose of addressing limitations in previous studies, such as the lack of diversity in cultural background, restricted sample characteristics, and poorly fitting structure models. Participants consisted of 253 parents of children between the ages of 7 and 12 years, 53% being mothers. The parents completed the paper version of the questionnaire. Confirmatory Factor Analyses were carried out to determine whether theoretically and empirically established models including one and two factors would also provide adequate fits in a Danish sample. A previous study using the original ECR suggested that Scandinavian samples may best be described using a five-factor solution. Our results indicated that the one- and two-factor models of the ECR-R did not fit the data well. Exploratory Factor Analysis revealed a five-factor model. Our study provides evidence that further investigation is needed to establish which model may provide the best model fit in the Scandinavian countries.

Emotional Dysregulation and Attachment Dimensions in Female Patients With Bulimia Nervosa

“…The items are distributed in two subscales; attachmentrelated anxiety (i.e., the extent to which people are insecure vs. secure about the availability and responsiveness of close person) and attachment-related avoidance (i.e., the extent to which people are uncomfortable being close to others vs. secure depending on others). More research confirms the improvement of metric characteristics of the ECR-R in relation to the ECR (Esbjørn et al 2015), and the stability of the twofactor structure (Sibley & Liu 2004). Cronbach α reliability coefficient obtained in this study for anxiety subscale was 0.90 and for avoidance subscale was 0.92.…”

Maternal-fetal bonding among pregnant women at psychosocial risk: The roles of adult attachment style, prenatal parental reflective functioning, and depressive symptoms

“…The ECR-S provides a reliable and valid measure of adult attachment style [ 49 ]. A Danish translation of the ECR-S was used in this study [ 50 ].…”

The Study of Security Priming on Avoidant Attentional Biases: Combining Microsaccadic Eye-Movement Measurement With a Dot-Probe Task

“…The ECR-R was filled out on-line and only individuals with anxiety scores <3.96 were invited to participate. This cutoff was ascertained through averaging anxiety scores from seven studies on the psychometric properties of the ECR-R ( Tsagarakis et al, 2007 ; Alonso-Arbiol et al, 2008 ; Olssøn et al, 2010 ; Holland et al, 2012 ; Busonera et al, 2014 ; Esbjørn et al, 2015 ). To ensure no inadvertent priming of attachment-related thoughts from the ECR-R ( Cassidy et al, 2009 ; Chun et al, 2015 ), 10days were allowed between pre-screen and experiment.…”