Attachment Patterns and their Relationship to Social Adjustment among Kindergarten Children in Jordan

Asma  Alkhawaldeh; Abdallah  Alalawin

doi:10.35516/hum.v49i1.1652

Authors

Asma Alkhawaldeh Isra University
Abdallah Alalawin The Hashemite University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.35516/hum.v49i1.1652

Keywords:

Attachment Patterns ; Social Adjustment ; Kindergarten Children

Abstract

This research aims to discover the relationship between the styles of attachment for ‎children in Jordanian kindergarten and their social adjustment by using the descriptive ‎correlational method. Where the sample consisted of (130) kindergarten children, of whom (72) females and (58) males were chosen randomly. To reach ‎the goals of the study, two tools were utilized. First, the Social ‎Adjustment Scale, which consisted of 25 items. These items were answered by the children’s’ teachers. The ‎second scale is attachment patterns that included three dimensions: Secure, Insecure –‎Avoidant, and Anxiety. It consists of 20 items answered by mothers. The indications of ‎validity and reliability were achieved through testing the validity of the structure and ‎the content, and the reliability was tested by determining the Cronbach's alpha and the Split half Reliability. The findings of the research ‎showed that there is a strong positive relationship between the social adjustment scale ‎and the secure attachment scale with Pearson’s correlation equal to 0.76. Furthermore, a strong negative correlation is observed between the social ‎adjustment scale and the Insecure-Avoidant attachment scale with Pearson’s correlation ‎equal to -0.66, as well as a strong negative relationship is found between the social ‎adjustment scale and the anxiety with Pearson’s correlation equal to -0.72. The ‎findings demonstrate that there is a statistically significant variation on the social ‎adjustment scale between the mean of males (2.55), and females, ‎(2.78) and there were no statistically significant differences at 0.05 level of significance ‎‎between males and females in all attachment patterns.‎

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