Measuring Attachment Anxiety and Attachment Avoidance in Middle-Childhood: Japanese Adaptation of ECR-RS for Children

This study adapted the ECR-RS for children into Japanese, to measure attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance, and examined its reliability and validity. Participants were 260 boys and 280 girls in Grade 4–6 (mean age=10.5 years). It examined whether the ECR-RS for children could be assumed to be based on 2 factors (attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance). We verified its reliability with tests of internal consistency and test–retest correlation at 5 months, and examined its validity with theoretically related or unrelated variables (attachment security, global self-esteem, emotional intelligence, empathy, life satisfaction, social anxiousness, loneliness, friendship satisfaction, and athletic competence). The results generally supported our predictions. In sum, the ECR-RS for children appears to have adequate psychometric properties of validity and reliability.