Developing a Marital Attachment Needs Scale

Abstract

Objective: This research was conducted to develop a marital attachment needs scale based on a mixed method research. Methods: In the first phase, attachment interviews were conducted with 35 married people (18 male and 17 female). Based on this step, the first version of the Marital Attachment Needs Scale (MANS) was developed with 12 items. To develop the first version of the MANS, these 12 items are designed on a 5-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. In the second phase of the research, 140 married people (62 female and 78) male completed the initial form of the Marital Attachment Needs Scale. In addition to the marital attachment needs scale, to examine the convergent and divergent validity psychometric indexes, the marital conflicts scale (MCS) and the short form of the experienced close relationship scale (ECR-S) were used. Results: Factor analysis showed a G-factor with an eigenvalue of 6.26 and a variance percentage of 52.19. The alpha coefficient and test-retest reliability coefficient for MANS were 0.90 and 0.92, respectively. Also, the results showed efficient convergent and divergent validity for the marital attachment needs scale. To check the G-factor hypothesis, confirmatory factor analysis (ML) was used. The results of the ML confirmatory factor analysis confirm the extracted G-factor in PC exploratory factor analysis for the MANS. Conclusions: Overall, the results of this research indicated the adequacy of the psychometric properties of the marital attachment needs scale for clinical and research jobs.

Keywords

• marital attachment needs scale
• psychometric properties
• emotional-focused therapy