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The assessment of attachment is perhaps one of the most challenging and controversial issues in investigating the role of this important psychological construct in interpersonal relationships across the transition from childhood to adulthood. While there have been many measures reported in the literature (Wilson & Wilkinson, 2012), the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA; Armsden & Greenberg, 1987a) is the most widely used self-report measure of attachment in adolescents (Wilson & Wilkinson, 2012). In their development of the original version of the IPPA, Armsden and Greenberg (1987a) argued the need for a self-report assessment tool that would go beyond assessing parental attachment to examine possible peer attachment relationships and that could assess both behavioural aspects of attachment and 'affectively toned cognitive expectancies' (Armsden & Greenberg, 1987a, pp. 431), which partly comprise internal working models. Importantly, the IPPA was developed separately, and with a different relationship focus, to the self-report, categorical measures of adult romantic attachment that were beginning to emerge around the same time (e.g., Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991; Hazan & Shaver, 1987).
The original version of the IPPA consists of a 28-item parent scale and a 25-item peer scale. Both of these scales can be broken down to Communication (Parent = 10 items, [alpha] = .91; Peer = 8 items, [alpha] = .87), Trust (Parent and Peer = 10 items, [alpha] = .91 for both), and Alienation (Parent = 8 items, [alpha] = .86; Peer = 7 items, [alpha] = .72) subscales. Importantly, there is a substantial body of research showing that the IPPA, and its variants, are associated with key psychological outcomes across the age span of adolescence (e.g., Armsden & Greenberg, 1987a; Armsden, McCauley, Greenberg, Burke, & Mitchell, 1990; Bradford & Lyddon, 1993; Laible, Carlo, & Raffaelli, 2000; Lapsley, Rice & FitzGerald, 1990; Natarajan, Somasundaram, & Sundaram, 2011; Wilkinson & Walford, 2001; Wilkinson, 2004).
Despite its apparent popularity, relatively few studies have used the original items or subscales of the IPPA. Soon after its publication, various modifications began to appear in the literature, including the substitution of separate Mother and Father scales for the combined Parent scale (Armsden & Greenberg, 1987b), the use of short forms of various lengths and changes to the response...