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The factor structure of the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA): A
survey of Italian adolescents
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The factor structure of the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA):
A survey of Italian adolescents
Cecilia Serena Pace ⇑, Pietro San Martini, Giulio Cesare Zavattini
La Sapienza, University of Rome, Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology, Italy
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: Despite the intensive use of the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA), a measure of attachment
Received 22 October 2010 which centres on individual differences in adolescents and their ability to evaluate their relationships
Received in revised form 18 February 2011 with parents and peers, the factor structure of the inventory requires further investigation. This study
Accepted 5 March 2011
of 1059 Italian adolescents compared the three models which are discussed in the literature: the one-fac-
Available online 6 April 2011
tor model (attachment security), the two-factor model (trust–communication and alienation) and the
three-factor model (trust, communication and alienation), and examined the influences of age and gender
Keywords:
on the IPPA’s scores. Our findings provide support for the reliability of the latest and longer version of the
Attachment
Adolescents
IPPA (75-item). Factor analysis showed that the three-factor model had the best fit, although the three
Parent dimensions are strongly interrelated. Sixteen year olds had lower attachment security to their fathers
Peer than the results of the other adolescent age groups. Males reported lower alienation scores than females
Factor structure in the paternal form, while females had higher attachment security, trust and communication scores than
males in the peers form.
Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction from their parental figures and allow them to form an adult
identity, but on the other hand, these changes will depend on
Attachment theory (Bowlby, 1988) advocates that children de- the adolescent’s personal history of attachment relationships (Al-
velop internal representations of attachment relationships, called len & Land, 2008). In fact, during adolescence, peer group and
internal working models (IWMs), which are formed through their friends become increasingly important and there is an overlap be-
everyday interactions with their caregivers during early child- tween new relationships with friends and previous relations with
hood. The IWMs contain expectations and strategies for managing parents.
interpersonal relationships and exploratory behaviour, regulating In order to investigate this issue further, therefore, the IPPA
emotions and dealing with distress. Differences in the quality of (Armsden & Greenberg, 1987, 1989; Greenberg, Siegel, & Leitch,
child–parent affective bonds correspond to individual differences 1984), a self-report questionnaire designed specifically for teenag-
in the IWMs of Self and Other. Secure attachments foster the ers that assesses their relationships with both their parents and
development of models in which others are viewed as available their peers, seems to be a useful method of evaluation that in re-
and trustworthy, while the self is conceptualised as worthy of cent years has been increasingly used in international research
care, love and attention. Insecure attachments develop IWMs of (Baiocco, Laghi, & Paola, 2009;Wilkinson & Walford, 2001).
the self as unworthy and unlovable, while others are considered
as unavailable and/or unreliable. According to Bowlby’s evolution-
ary theory, these patterns have been shown to be moderately sta- 1.1. Brief history of IPPA’s factor structure
ble over long periods of time under stable family and caregiving
conditions. The IWMs are viewed as the main source of continuity The IPPA was developed for adolescents aged between 12 and
between attachment in infancy and attachment in adolescence 19-years-old in order to assess their perceptions of the positive
and adulthood. and negative affective/cognitive dimensions of their relationships
Adolescence is a peculiar period in the life cycle: on the one with their parents and close friends, investigating how well these
hand, developments and changes in IWMs distance adolescents figures serve as sources of psychological security.
The original version (Greenberg et al., 1984) contained two
forms of assessing attachment security towards parents (28 items)
⇑ Corresponding author. and peers (25 items). Later, Armsden and Greenberg (1987),
E-mail address: ceciliapace@fastwebnet.it (C.S. Pace). arguing that one factor was insufficient to describe the complex
0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.paid.2011.03.006
Author's personal copy
construct of attachment, expanded the number of items in both the Vivona (2000) suggested using the three sub-scales in order to as-
parental and peers forms to 31 and 29, respectively and explored sess individual differences according to the following attachment
their factor structures through exploratory factor analysis (EFA). categories:
The sample consisted of 179 college students aged between 16
and 20 years (mean age: 18.9 years). They expected to find two fac- (a) Secure attachment, when both trust and communication
tors, one related to a ‘‘positive affective/cognitive experience of levels are medium or high and the alienation level is med-
trust in the accessibility and responsiveness of attachment figures’’ ium or low. Alienation scores should always be lower than
and one linked to ‘‘negative affective/cognitive experiences of an- those of trust and communication;
ger and/or hopelessness resulting from unresponsive or inconsis- (b) Insecure-avoidant attachment, when the trust level is med-
tently responsive attachment figures’’ (Armsden & Greenberg, ium or low, the communication level is low and the alien-
1987, p. 431). However, using the criterion of eigenvalues greater ation score is high;
than 1, the authors extracted (and rotated orthogonally) three fac- (c) Insecure-ambivalent attachment, when the trust level is
tors in both the parental and peer forms. The factor structures of medium or low and the communication and alienation
the two forms, which were quite similar, were interpreted as psy- scores are medium or high.
chologically meaningful. For the parental form, the first factor
(trust) was interpreted in terms of ‘‘parental understanding and re-
spect and mutual trust’’, the second factor (communication) in 1.2. Current study
terms of ‘‘the extent and quality of verbal communication with
parents’’ and the third factor (alienation) in terms of ‘‘feelings of The current study aims to assess the following points in a sam-
alienation and isolation’’. Similarly, in the peer form, the first factor ple of adolescents:
(trust) was interpreted as ‘‘mutual respect and trust’’, the second
(communication) in terms of ‘‘perceived quality of communica- 1. The dimensional structure of the inventory using preliminarily
tion’’ and the third (alienation) as ‘‘alienation from friends, but EFAs of the three forms followed by CFAs of the three models
with the recognition of the need to be closer to them’’ (Armsden explicitly proposed or implied in the literature: the one-factor
& Greenberg, 1987, p. 433). The subscales were also strongly corre- model (attachment security), the three-factor model (trust,
lated both in the parental (|r| between .70 and .76) and peer forms communication and alienation) and the two-factor model
(|r| between .40 and .76), so that the authors themselves in further (trust–communication and alienation);
analyses used only the overall attachment security scores, which 2. The main descriptive statistics of the IPPA scores along with the
were obtained for each form by adding up the trust and communi- effects of age and gender, in order to confirm gender differences
cation scores and subtracting the alienation score. in the attachment styles as reported by Gullone and Robinson
Later, Armsden and Greenberg (1989) proposed a revised ver- (2005) and provide norms for the interpretation of the scores
sion of the inventory, dividing the parental form into maternal of individual subjects.
and paternal forms that were identical except for references to
the mother or father. This version contains 75 items, equally di-
2. Method
vided into the three forms for mother, father and peers. Greenberg
(2004) recently recommended using this version of the inventory
2.1. Participants
as it differentiates between the roles of each parent in addition
to relationships with peers.
The participants consisted of 1059 volunteers; 574 females and
In recent years, Johnson, Ketring, and Abshire (2003), as part of
402 males (83 participants did not report their gender). They were
a study mainly aimed at creating a form for parents only, tested the
middle or high school Italian students, ranging in age from 13 to
responses of a small sample of adolescents (N = 89, mean age:
18 years old (mean = 15.66, SD = 1.59). All participants belonged
14.3 years) to the paternal and maternal forms of the IPPA using
predominately to middle to upper socio-economic status and lived
confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), finding a bad fit for the three-
with both parents.
factor model in both cases. A subsequent EFA, using a scree test
to determine the number of factors and the oblique rotation of
the factor axes, found for both forms two factors that the authors 2.2. Instrument
interpreted as trust (mainly including items originally labelled as
trust and communication) and alienation. This study utilised the latest version of the IPPA (Armsden and
In another study, which aimed to validate a short French form of Greenberg ,1989), which comprises three forms for mother, father,
the IPPA (participants N = 289, mean age: 14.6 years), Vignoli and and peer, each consisting of 25 items. In each form, the item format
Mallet (2004) conducted EFAs on the items in the paternal and was a five-point Likert scale: 1 (almost always or always true), 2
maternal forms, imposing on both analyses a three-factor solution (often true), 3 (sometimes true), 4 (rarely true) and 5 (almost never
with orthogonal rotation. In both forms, the extracted factors ap- or never true). Each form yielded an overall score for attachment
peared to correspond only partially to the three subscales proposed security as well as three subscale scores: trust (example item ‘‘I
by Armsden and Greenberg (1987). trust my mother/father/friends’’), communication (example item
As Armsden and Greenberg (1987) and Johnson et al. (2003) ‘‘I tell my mother/father/friends about my problems and troubles’’)
only used a small number of subjects in their studies, it is impos- and alienation (example item ‘‘I get upset a lot more than my
sible to choose one of the proposed factor solutions, suggesting mother/father/friends knows about’’).
that further investigation using a larger sample may be useful. To
date it still remains unclear whether it would be correct or not
to distinguish one, two or three dimensions within the global con- 2.3. Procedure
struct of attachment, considering that the original purpose of the
IPPA was to capture the complexity of this construct by identifying The data were collected in classroom settings with the agree-
its different facets. ment of the teachers. Students were told that the questionnaires
Furthermore, the issue of the factorial justification of the three- were anonymous and confidential, so they could feel free to re-
factor model is relevant since both the authors of the IPPA and spond sincerely to the questions.
Author's personal copy
Table 2
CFA of the maternal, paternal and peer forms: v2, RMSEA, CFI and AIC of the one-factor, two-factor and three-factor models.
Table 3
Means, SD, skewness and kurtosis of the scores for attachment security, trust, communication and alienation.
Females Males
Mean S.D. Skewness Kurtosis Mean S.D. Skewness Kurtosis
Maternal form
Att. security 3.83 0.75 .93 .39 3.82 0.62 .76 .58
Trust 4.00 0.80 1.23 1.12 4.06 0.68 1.13 1.11
Communication 3.24 0.81 .67 .28 3.15 0.71 .46 .06
Alienation 1.60 0.56 .75 .27 1.57 0.48 .71 .94
Paternal form
Att. security 3.46 0.85 .62 .15 3.56 0.73 .68 .52
Trust 3.83 0.93 1.09 .63 3.86 0.83 1.24 1.49
Communication 2.71 0.86 .09 .69 2.84 0.78 .20 .37
Alienation 1.89 0.67 .57 .13 1.74 0.57 .69 .45
Peer form
Att. security 4.04 0.62 1.15 1.38 3.80 0.62 .69 1.01
Trust 4.22 0.73 1.41 2.16 4.00 0.73 1.07 1.57
Communication 4.05 0.73 .94 .72 3.59 0.77 .38 .12
Alienation 2.21 0.63 .92 1.28 2.61 0.68 .84 1.13
3.4. Effects of gender and age on the scores for the attachment security
Table 4
scale
Means and SDs for attachment security for the maternal, paternal and peer forms at
different ages.
To evaluate the effects of age and gender on the attachment
Age Maternal form Paternal form Peer form
security scores of the three forms of the inventory, three two-factor
variance analyses (ANOVAs) were conducted. P-values <.01 were Mean S.D. Mean S.D. Mean S.D.
considered statistically significant in all the analyses. 13 3.86 0.62 3.63 0.78 3.91 0.66
The ANOVA for the maternal form did not indicate any signifi- 14 3.94 0.59 3.60 0.75 3.99 0.64
15 3.87 0.71 3.60 0.77 3.98 0.61
cant effects of age by gender interaction (F5,955 < 1), age
16 3.71 0.79 3.27 0.95 3.97 0.62
(F5,955 = 2.16, p = .056), or gender (F1,955 < 1). 17 3.77 0.69 3.52 0.77 3.94 0.63
The ANOVA for the paternal form showed no effects of age by 18 3.79 0.74 3.38 0.76 3.83 0.62
gender interaction (F5,954 = 1.13, p = .339) or gender (F1,954 = 2.70,
p = .100), but a significant effect of age (F5,954 = 4.31, p = .001,
g2 = .022). Post-hoc comparisons (Tukey test) showed that this ef-
fect was due to the group of 16 year olds scoring significantly low- 3.5. Effects of gender and age on the scores for the trust,
er than all the other age groups except the 18 year olds (Table 4). communication and alienation subscales
The ANOVA for the peer form revealed no effects of age by gen-
der interaction (F5,955 = 1.07, p = .373) or age (F5,955 = 1.23, The effects of gender and age on the subscale scores were exam-
p = .293), but a significant effect of gender (F1,955 = 34.02, p = .000, ined by multivariate analysis of variances (MANOVAs) followed by
g2 = .034), with males scoring lower than females (Table 3). univariate analyses of the multivariate significant effects.
Author's personal copy
The MANOVA for the maternal form showed no significant ef- which to develop a more complex multidimensional inventory’’
fects of age by gender interaction or age, and a significant effect (p. 251).
of gender (F3,953 = 4.310, p = .005). However, the ANOVAs of the last Age had no effect on IPPA scores, except for 16-year-old adoles-
effect did not reveal any significant effects, either for trust (F1,965 < 1), cents who showed an overall global score of attachment security
communication (F1,965 = 3.07, p = .080) or alienation (F1,965 < 1). towards their fathers which was lower than for the younger and
The MANOVA for the paternal form presented no significant ef- older participants. We do not have a reasonable explanation for
fects of age by gender interaction and age, but a significant gender this result and will not discuss it further.
effect (F3,952 = 6.53, p = .000). The ANOVAs of the latter effect re- In terms of gender, two effects were observed. Males scored
vealed that alienation had a significant gender effect lower than females on the alienation subscale of the paternal form.
(F1,954 = 7.618, p = .006, g2 = .008) with a higher mean score for fe- This finding may reveal that males develop less problematic rela-
males (see Table 3), and no significant effect of communication tionships with their fathers than females, who could be more in-
(F1,954 = 5.43, p = .020) or trust (F1,954 < 1). volved in struggles for independence and autonomy. On the
The MANOVA for the peer form showed no significant effects of other hand, males, compared to females, appeared to be more inse-
age by gender interaction and age, but a significant effect of gender cure around their peers, particularly in terms of the trust and com-
(F3,953 = 35.08, p = .000). The ANOVAs of the latter effect revealed munication subscales. These results seem to be consistent with the
significant effects of communication (F1,955 = 78.71, p = .000, results of Gullone and Robinson (2005), indicating that males re-
g2 = .076) and trust (F1,955 = 17.75, p = .000, g2 = .018), with a high- ported more positive attachments to their parents than females,
er mean score for females for both (see Table 3). No significant ef- while females reported more positive attachments to their peers
fect of alienation emerged (F1,955 < 1). compared with males. One possible interpretation is that females,
during adolescence, tend to disengage earlier from parental bonds
4. Discussion and conclusions and invest more in their relationships with their friends.
In conclusion the findings from this study give further support
In terms of the dimensional structure of the three forms of the to the factorial validity and the reliability of the questionnaire
inventory, the CFAs show that the model best fitted to the data is when it is used to evaluate overall attachment security. As for
the model with three correlated dimensions. This is the conceptual the assessment of the three sub-dimensions originally proposed
equivalent to a hierarchical model with three first order factors by Armsden and Greenberg (1987), however, our results suggest
functionally dependent on a second order factor and supports both to reduce the excessive correlations between the three subscales
the use of the overall scores for attachment security and the sub- by searching for other items more specifically linked to the con-
scale scores for trust, communication and alienation. In all three structs they refer to. An EFA in the pool of the old and new items
forms, however, the high correlations between the latent variables may then help improve the subscales by eliminating cross-load-
indicate that the constructs are poorly differentiated and this casts ing/ambiguous items and retaining only items that appear as pure
some doubt over whether the segmentation of the inventory into markers of the sub-dimensions. For future research it may also be
three subscales is useful at a practical level. For instance, it is un- useful to integrate the study of the IPPA into the broader context of
clear whether this segmentation is useful in terms of the incremen- adult attachment psychometrics, for example, defining the rela-
tal validity of the subscales in predicting attachment-related tions between the three factors of the IPPA – trust, communication
variables or in building sufficiently differentiated attachment and alienation – and the two dimensions of romantic attachment –
categories. anxiety and avoidance – evidenced by Fraley, Waller, and Brennan
Regarding this issue, it may be relevant to note that in Armsden (2000).
and Greenberg’s study (1987) the content of some items is not
clearly referable to the sub-scales to which they belong. For in-
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