Full length article The paradox of phone attachment: Development and validation of the Young Adult Attachment to Phone Scale (YAPS) Leora Trub a, * , Baptiste Barbot a, b a Pace University, Department of Psychology, USA b Yale University, Child Study Center, USA article info Article history: Received 29 April 2016 Received in revised form 28 June 2016 Accepted 23 July 2016 Keywords: Attachment theory Smartphone attachment Phone addiction Technology Smartphone measure abstract Accurate evaluation of people's attachment to phones is crucial to understanding the impact of phone use in everyday life. The Young Adult Attachment to Phone Scale (YAPS) is a concise instrument, repre- senting the first multi-dimensional measure of phone attachment. After item development involving focus groups with young adults and content validity analysis from attachment experts, a preliminary version of the YAPS was administered to 955 participants ages 18e29. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported a 2-dimension structure: Refuge, characterized by feeling safe with the phone and uncomfortable upon separation; and Burden, characterized by relief upon separation from the phone and the perception that it diminishes enjoyment of a given moment. Findings reflect the strong psy- chometric properties of the YAPS, including reliability, factorial validity and criterion validity with relevant constructs. The YAPS appears promising for future research aimed at understanding the nature of attachment to phones in human behavior. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The purpose of the work presented here was to develop a valid and reliable measure of attachment to phones, a prerequisite for any examination of the pervasive yet ambivalent role of phones in people's lives and a better understanding of consequences associ- ated with phone use. This measure aims to address the need to develop measurement of phone use and misuse that offers an alternative to simply applying concepts of addiction to phone use (Billieux et al., 2015). Further, given the need for short measures that can be used to study young adult behaviors and experiences, we aimed to develop a short, concise measure of this construct, which we considered to be relatively narrow and well-defined. Young adults aged 18e29 were of particular interest, in order to isolate the experiences of “digital natives” (Prensky, 2001). Specif- ically, we aimed to develop a new measure of phone attachment mapping onto the dimensions of attachment anxiety and avoid- ance, consistent with preliminary evidence that attachment phe- nomena may be relevant to understanding people's relationships to their phones (e.g., Keefer, Landau, Rothschild, & Sullivan, 2012) as well as mounting evidence regarding the paradoxical emotions that are elicited by them (e.g., Baron, 2011; Jarvenpaa & Lang, 2005; Turkle, 2011). To that end, the development of the Young Adult Attachment to Phone Scale (YAPS) involved creating items through focus groups in consultation with experts in the field of attachment, as well as gathering pilot data on item functioning and underlying structure (Study 1), followed by a validation study in a larger group of young adults, encompassing an examination of YAPS scales scores internal consistency, factorial validity and measurement invariance across gender, as well as criterion validity analysis using relevant external measures (Study 2). Both studies were rooted in the literature on phone addiction and attachment, which are reviewed below. 2. Literature review 2.1. Smartphone behavior and attitudes Smartphone ownership among American adults has doubled since 2011 to 64% (Pew Research Center, 2015b) and to 85% among young adults aged 18e29 (Nielsen, 2014). This has produced a host of societal changes. On the negative side, the expectation that messages will get an immediate response (Hall & Baym, 2012) may contribute to the 26% of reported motor vehicle accidents in 2014 * Corresponding author. Psychology Department, Pace University, 41 Park Row, 13th Floor, New York, NY 10038, USA. E-mail address: ltrub@pace.edu (L. Trub). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Computers in Human Behavior journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.07.050 0747-5632/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Computers in Human Behavior 64 (2016) 663e672