Development and validation of the Adult Attachment Trauma Questionnaire

Despite the wide usage of the concept of Attachment Trauma (AT) in clinics and research, there is a scarcity of proper assessment tools. This work aims to fill this gap by outlining the development and validation of the Adult Attachment Trauma Questionnaire (AATQ). The preliminary item pool covered eight conceptual domains: Conflict, Attachment-related Dissociation, Attachment Phobia, Victim, Compulsive Savior, Dangerous Self, Revengeful Perpetrator, and Sadistic Perpetrator. The items were subsequently analyzed through two pilot studies. After revising the items according to the results, the final item pool underwent Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), and convergent and incremental validity studies in a general sample of 407 Italian adults. The EFA supported the eight-factor structure. The convergent validity analysis demonstrated excellent convergent and predictive validity across all questionnaire domains, except for two domains (Compulsive Savior, Sadistic Perpetrator) that did not exhibit good performance and were subsequently removed. This led to a final structure of six subscales and 28 total items, confirmed in a further EFA. Regarding incremental validity, the AATQ performed better than a popular fearful/disorganized attachment measure (Adult Disorganized Attachment scale) and a standard measure of adult attachment (Emotions in Close Relationships) in predicting traumatic and pathological outcomes.