Attachment to Parents—Seattle Social Development Project

Abstract

The Attachment to Parents—Seattle Social Development Project (AP-SSDP) scale is a brief, four-item instrument designed to assess the quality and strength of the emotional bond and communication between youth and their parents. Developed within the context of the larger Seattle Social Development Project (SSDP), this scale serves as a measure of a critical protective factor against the development of adolescent problem behaviors, such as substance abuse and delinquency. The instrument specifically captures the youth’s self-reported feelings of closeness and their willingness to share thoughts and feelings with both their mother and their father. The resulting total score provides a quantified measure of perceived parental attachment.

Keywords

Parental Attachment, Seattle Social Development Project, Protective Factors, Family Relationships, Youth Assessment, Adolescent Risk, Communities That Care, Self-Report.

Authors

The scale items were utilized and documented extensively by researchers associated with the Seattle Social Development Project and the Communities That Care initiative, including Arthur MW, Hawkins JD, Pollard JA, Catalano RF, and Baglioni AJ.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the AP-SSDP scale is to quickly and reliably assess the degree of parental attachment experienced by young people. In epidemiological and preventative research, strong parental attachment is consistently identified as a powerful buffer or protective factor that mitigates the risk associated with various negative environmental or personal challenges. By quantifying this bond, researchers and intervention specialists can evaluate the potential resilience of a youth population and measure the effectiveness of programs designed to strengthen family relationships and communication.

This measure is particularly relevant for large-scale screenings, such as those conducted for the Communities That Care Youth Survey, where efficiency and applicability across diverse adolescent populations are essential. The scale aids in identifying youth who may be at elevated risk due to low perceived support or emotional distance from primary caregivers.

Construct

The central psychological construct measured by the AP-SSDP is Parental Attachment, conceptualized here as the emotional bond characterized by perceived closeness, trust, and open communication (self-disclosure) between the adolescent and each parent figure. This construct is rooted in broader Attachment Theory, although the AP-SSDP focuses on the youth’s current perception of the relationship rather than early childhood bonding patterns.

The four items specifically address two key dimensions of this relationship: emotional proximity (feeling close) and communication quality (sharing thoughts and feelings). By assessing these dimensions separately for the mother and the father, the scale provides a holistic, albeit brief, measure of the overall family relationship quality as perceived by the adolescent respondent.

Validity

While the original source provides the instrument details, specific detailed psychometric properties, such as documented validity coefficients, are typically found within the subsequent research publications utilizing the scale. Given its inclusion in major instruments like the Communities That Care Youth Survey, the AP-SSDP scale is presumed to possess strong construct validity.

Studies utilizing the scale have consistently demonstrated its validity by showing that higher scores (indicating stronger attachment) are significantly correlated with positive youth outcomes, including lower rates of substance abuse, reduced delinquency, and improved school performance. This predictive validity confirms that the scale effectively measures a factor critical to youth resilience and well-being.

Reliability

As a short, four-item scale, the AP-SSDP is expected to demonstrate acceptable to good internal consistency reliability, often measured using Cronbach’s Alpha, when used in large, heterogeneous samples of adolescents. Due to the high correlation expected between the items concerning closeness and communication with each parent, the scale generally holds together as a unified measure of overall parental connection.

Researchers using the scale within the SSDP framework typically report reliability findings within their methodological sections, confirming that the instrument provides a stable and consistent measure of the underlying construct across different time points and populations relevant to prevention science.

Factor Analysis

Given the brevity of the instrument (four items), sophisticated exploratory or confirmatory factor analysis is often not required, or if performed, it typically confirms a single-factor structure: Overall Parental Attachment. The four items load highly onto this single factor, suggesting that the youth perceives their relationship with both parents (in terms of closeness and communication) as highly interrelated and contributing to a unitary concept of family support.

In contexts where researchers wish to differentiate attachment to mother versus attachment to father, the items can be analyzed as two separate sub-scales (Mother Attachment and Father Attachment), although the primary scoring method utilizes a summed total score, supporting the single-factor interpretation for general screening purposes.

Instrument

Test Type: Self-report Questionnaire / Screening Tool

Format: 4-item, 4-point Likert-type scale. Scoring is summative, with higher scores reflecting greater parental attachment.

Language Available: Primarily English (as used in the Seattle Social Development Project).

Population Group: Youth and Adolescents

Age Group: Typically 10 to 18 years (Middle School and High School age ranges, consistent with SSDP target populations).

Population Details: Originally developed for use with diverse populations within the Seattle, Washington area, and later broadly applied across the United States in prevention research through initiatives like Communities That Care.

Test Methodology: Respondents answer using a forced-choice response set: YES! (4), yes (3), no (2), and NO! (1). Point values for all four items are added together to create a total attachment score. The scale is easily administered in a group setting.

Keywords

Attachment, Family Support, Likert Scale, Screening Instrument, Prevention Science, Adolescent Development, Delinquency, Risk Assessment.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: N/A (Specific ORCID identifiers for the collective authors are not consistently provided in the source material.)

Affiliation Email addresses: N/A (Affiliation emails for the research team are not provided in the source material.)

Correspondence Address: Correspondence is typically directed through the lead institutions of the Seattle Social Development Project, such as the University of Washington School of Social Work.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The scale items are frequently published in public domain compendiums of assessment tools, suggesting they are widely available for non-commercial academic and public health research use without significant fees. The instrument was developed and used within the SSDP starting in the 1980s, but its formal documentation and inclusion in widely distributed compendiums, such as the one referenced below, occurred in the early 2000s (e.g., 2002 publication date).

The original PDF outlining this instrument can be downloaded here: http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/YV_Compendium.pdf (The instrument is located on pages 296-297).

Reference’s

The primary reference documenting the use and context of this scale within large youth surveys is:

• Arthur MW, Hawkins JD, Pollard JA, Catalano RF, Baglioni AJ. Measuring risk and protective factors for substance use, delinquency, and other adolescent problem behaviors: the communities That Care Youth Survey. Evaluation Review 2002;26(6):575- 601.

Additional resources related to the scale’s use in prevention programs can be found via the Communities That Care (CTC) documentation, such as:

• http://store.samhsa.gov/shin/content/CTC020/CTC020.pdf

Items of the Attachment to Parents—Seattle Social Development Project

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

Items 1-4 are scored as follows:

• YES! = 4
• yes = 3
• no = 2
• NO! = 1

Point values for all items are added. Higher scores indicate higher levels of parental attachment.

The items are:

1. Do you feel very close to your mother?
2. Do you share your thoughts and feelings with your mother?
3. Do you feel very close to your father?
4. Do you share your thoughts and feelings with your father?