The Chinese Translation Of IPPA And Adolescent Attachment In Relation To Self-esteem And Social Adaptation

Attachment is described as a strong, enduring affectional bond of substantial intensity with important others throughout the life span of individual. Attachment relationship can not only provides positive emotional support and sense of intimacy but also predicts aspects of self-esteem and social adaptation outcomes of individual especially in the transition periods of development. Attachment research fields were broadened from infants to adolescents and adults in recent years abroad and fewer inland. This study was to explore the quality and characteristic of adolescent's attachment relationship with parents and peers and to examine the links and mechanisms between adolescents' attachment with parents and peers and self-esteem, social adaptation.The paper includes two studies. The first study was to examine the reliability and validity of Inventory of Parents and Peers Attachment (IPPA) after editing into Chinese version. 440 adolescents ranging from 13 to 18 years of age complete IPPA in the first parallel investigation. And samples of 528 adolescents complete the revised edition of IPPA in the second test. The second study explored differences on demographic variables of adolescents' perception of their attachment relationships with their mothers, fathers, and peers and examined links and mechanisms between adolescents' attachment relationship with parents, peers and self-esteem, social adaptation with the use of T test, F test, regression analysis, and structural equation model.The main findings are as following:1. Inventory of Parents and Peers Attachment (IPPA) is consisted of three subscales: mother attachment, father attachment, and peersattachment. Figures of adolescents include mother, father, and peer. Mother attachment and father attachment have the same structure, which consist of three factors: "trust", "communication", and "alienation". But peers attachment can be described with two factors: "communication" and "alienation".2. Revised edition of IPPA was reported satisfied internal consistency reliability ( a father=0.93, a mother=0.92,and a peers=0.94). And also, it revealed good constructive validity and empirical validity.3. Overall, the quality of adolescents' attachment relationship is high. The quality of peers' attachment is slightly higher than parents' attachment.4. Perceived attachment to mother and father did not significantly differ between males and females. However, females scored significantly higher than males on a measure of attachment to peers. With the regards of grade effects, adolescents attachment to parents tend to decline first and ascend at the middle of adolescent and tend to smooth at the late adolescent. The overall trend of adolescents perceived peers attachment is smooth from the early to late adolescent. The junior school students at grade three scored lowest on both parents and peers attachment measures and statistically differs from other grades on mother and father attachment measures. No differences has found between students from rural area and city on the both three subscales of attachment measures. Peers attachment is positively related to Parents attachment.5. Mother attachment, father attachment, and peers attachment make the different contribution to self-esteem. However, adolescents attachment to mother has the strongest impact on self-esteem, next is peers attachment and father attachment.6. Attachment to mother, father, and peers has impact on different aspect of social adaptation. Furthermore, self-esteem partially mediate the...