Avoidant Attachment and Quality of Life among Secondary School Students in Baghdad: A Cross-Sectional Correlational Study
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Objective: This cross-sectional correlational study examined avoidant attachment, quality of life, and the strength of their association among secondary school students in Baghdad, Iraq.
Methods and Materials: The sample consisted of 400 students from the Karkh Second Directorate of Education during the 2024-25 academic year. Participants were selected through stratified random sampling and included 160 males and 240 females; 160 students were in the scientific track and 240 in the literary track. Data were collected with a researcher-developed 20-item avoidant attachment scale and the 38-item Jamal quality-of-life scale, which covers psychological, social, and school domains. Psychometric evidence for the avoidant attachment scale was preliminary and included item discrimination, item-total correlations, Cronbach's alpha, and test-retest reliability, but no factor analysis or external validation was available.
Findings: Corrected analyses showed that the standardized avoidant attachment scores were centered near the reference T-score and should be interpreted descriptively rather than as evidence of a validated clinical level. Quality of life was above the theoretical mean, M = 120.17, SD = 9.09, t(399) = 13.58, p < .001, d = 0.68. Avoidant attachment was weakly and positively correlated with quality of life, r = .215, 95% CI [.119, .307], p < .001. Correlations did not differ significantly by gender or academic specialization.
Conclusion: The findings indicate a weak and theoretically unexpected positive association between avoidant attachment and quality of life. Given the correlational design, aggregate-data reanalysis, and preliminary validation of the avoidant attachment scale, the results should be interpreted cautiously and require replication with established attachment measures and domain-level quality-of-life analyses.
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