2018 · Study · English
The Communities That Care (CTC) Family Attachment Scale: Measurement Invariance Across Family Structures
Schwendemann, H. E., Frisch, J. U., Reder, M., Mößle, T., Soellner, R., & Bitzer, E. M.
Schwendemann, H. E., Frisch, J. U., Reder, M., Mößle, T., Soellner, R., & Bitzer, E. M. (2018). The Communities That Care (CTC) Family Attachment Scale: Measurement Invariance Across Family Structures. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 27(5), 1440–1448. doi.org/10.1007/s10826-017-1009-9
Summary
Measurement study on the family attachment scale of the German Communities That Care Youth Survey. Family protective factors are central to prevention, yet evidence on measuring them in families other than the two-parent household is thin, although valid measurement is a precondition for evaluating targeted interventions. The authors examined the factor structure of the CTC Family Attachment Scale and its measurement invariance across family structures in 2,459 adolescents in grades 6 to 11 in Lower Saxony. Confirmatory factor analysis supported a two-factor solution, attachment to mother and attachment to father, with good fit (CFI 0.996; RMSEA 0.050; SRMR 0.019) and strong measurement invariance between adolescents from two-parent and single-parent families. The scale therefore appears suitable for assessing family attachment reliably in both family types, which matters for CTC communities because the survey's protective-factor profile has to be comparable across the range of household forms found in a municipality.