Partner’s Emotional Dependency Scale: Psychometrics.

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Clinical Psychology
• Relationship Science

Background:

• Emotional dependency, characterized by excessive affectional bonding, is linked to low self-esteem and negative emotional outcomes like anxiety and depression.
• Existing tools for measuring emotional dependency have limitations, including a focus on dependent personality disorder, specific age groups, or lack of validation in Spanish populations.
• There is a need for a validated, accessible tool to assess emotional dependency in adults within intimate relationships.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and validate a new scale for measuring emotional dependency in adult partners.
• To overcome the limitations of existing emotional dependency assessment tools.
• To provide a reliable measure for emotional dependency in a general adult population.

Main Methods:

• A new scale, the Partner's Emotional Dependency Scale (SED), was developed.
• The study involved 166 adults (53 men, 113 women) from the general population.
• Participants completed the SED and the Emotional Dependency Questionnaire (CDE) for validation.

Main Results:

• The SED demonstrated a unidimensional structure with good internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = .90).
• The scale showed high convergent validity with the CDE (r = .86).
• No significant gender differences in emotional dependency were found, and cut-off points for low, moderate, high, and extreme dependency were established.

Conclusions:

• The Partner's Emotional Dependency Scale (SED) is a brief, user-friendly tool for assessing emotional dependency.
• The SED effectively measures emotional dependency unidimensionally within the context of stable intimate relationships (current or past).
• This validated scale is suitable for use in normative adult populations.