Child Attachment to Mother

The first 18 items are from the Coping Strategies Questionnaire (Finnegan et al., 1996) that measures older children’s preoccupied and avoidant dimensions of insecurity in relation to a caregiver in middle childhood. These two sub-scales are interpreted as equivalent to ambivalent and avoidant attachment, respectively, in middle childhood (Yunger, Corby, & Perry, 2005). The original scale has 36 Harter-format self-report items with 18 measuring preoccupied or ambivalent attachment and 18 measuring avoidant attachment. A shorter 20-item version has been used in the literature (Kerns, Tomich, Aspelmeier, & Contreras, 2000; Yunger, Corby, & Perry, 2005). We used 18 items from the full measure, some of which were modified slightly to be culturally relevant.
The last 8 items are from the Security Scale (Kerns, Klepac, & Cole, 1996; Kerns, Tomich, Aspelmeier, & Contreras, 2000), which originally had 15 self-report items using Harter’s format to measure children’s perceptions of a particular attachment relationship during middle childhood. Shorter versions have been used in the literature (Kerns, Schlegelmich, Morgan, & Abraham, 2005; Yunger, Corby, & Perry, 2005). We used 8 items. Consistent with the literature that uses these two scales together, these 26 items measure the three attachment types – secure, ambivalent, and avoidant.
The three scales are formed as the following (*reverse code):
Preoccupied: 1,5*,6*,8,11*,15*,17,18*
Avoidant: 2*,3, 4*,7,9*,10,12,13,14,16*
Felt Security: 19,20*,21,22*,23,24*,25,26*

• Finnegan, R. A., Hodges, E. V., & Perry, D. G. (1996). Preoccupied and avoidant coping during middle childhood. Child Development, 67(4),
  1318-1328.
• Kerns, K.A., Klepac, L., & Cole, A. (1996). Peer relationships and preadolescents’ perceptions of security in the child-mother relationship. Developmental Psychology, 32, 457–466.
• Kerns, K. A., Tomich, P. L., Aspelmeier, J. E., & Contreras, J. M. (2000). Attachment-based assessments of parent–child relationships in middle childhood. Developmental Psychology, 36, 614-626.
• Kerns, K.A., Schlegelmich, A., Morgan, T.A., & Abraham, M.M. (2005). Assessing attachment in middle childhood. In K.A. Kerns & R.A. Richardson (Eds), Attachment in middle childhood (pp. 46–70), New York: Guilford.
• Yunger, J. L., Corby, B. C., & Perry, D. G. (2005). Dimensions of attachment
  in middle childhood. In K. A. Kerns & R. A. Richardson (Eds.), Attachment in
  middle childhood (pp. 89-114). New York: Guilford.