Instrument Description

The Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA) is a self-report instrument designed to assess the perceived quality of individuals’ relationships with their parents and peers.

In the version presented in the source document, respondents are asked to consider their relationships with three important figures in their lives: their mother, their father, and their close friends.

The questionnaire focuses on respondents’ perceptions and feelings regarding these relationships. Its items address experiences such as emotional understanding, acceptance, trust, communication, availability for discussing personal concerns, and feelings of anger, misunderstanding, or interpersonal distance.

By assessing relationships with parents and friends separately, the IPPA provides a differentiated representation of the respondent’s perceived interpersonal relationships with significant people in their social environment.

Objective

The primary objective of the IPPA is to systematically assess the perceived quality of relationships with parents and peers.

The items included in the questionnaire examine whether respondents perceive significant others as people who:

respect their feelings,

accept them as they are,

understand when they are upset,

listen to their opinions,

can be trusted,

encourage them to discuss their difficulties,

and are available when they need to disclose personal concerns.

The questionnaire also includes negatively worded experiences involving anger, insufficient attention, embarrassment when discussing problems, lack of understanding, loneliness, or dissatisfaction with relationships.

This combination allows both supportive and difficult aspects of significant interpersonal relationships to be represented.

Structure of the IPPA-25

The questionnaire contained in the source document is organized into three separate sections.

Part I – Mother

The Mother section contains 25 items concerning the respondent’s relationship with their mother or with the person who fulfills the maternal role.

The instructions specify that when more than one person fulfills this role, respondents should answer with reference to the person they perceive as having the greatest influence on them.

Part II – Father

The Father section contains 25 items assessing comparable aspects of the respondent’s relationship with their father or paternal figure.

Items address areas such as respect for feelings, acceptance, understanding, trust, communication about personal concerns, emotional availability, and negative relational experiences.

Part III – Friends

The Friends section contains 25 items focusing on relationships with close friends.

These items assess experiences including seeking friends’ opinions, feeling understood and accepted, discussing problems and concerns, trusting friends, receiving emotional understanding, and experiencing loneliness, anger, or interpersonal difficulties.

Core Relational Dimensions

The content of the questionnaire reflects several important aspects of parent and peer relationships.

Trust: Refers to the extent to which respondents perceive significant others as understanding, accepting, respectful of their feelings, and dependable when support is needed.

Communication: Concerns openness in discussing personal problems and concerns, seeking advice, sharing feelings, and perceiving that the other person listens and takes an interest in the respondent’s experiences.

Alienation: Concerns experiences of emotional distance, anger, insufficient understanding, loneliness, or difficulty feeling adequately supported within the relationship.

Considering these relational characteristics together can provide a broader representation of the respondent’s perceived relationship with each significant figure.

Scoring

In the source questionnaire, items in the Mother, Father, and Friends sections are rated using a five-point response scale ranging from 1 to 5.

The response categories extend from:

1 = Never true / Almost never true

to:

5 = Almost always true / Always true

Respondents select one number indicating how accurately each statement describes their current relationship or experience.

The questionnaire contains both positively and negatively worded statements. Consequently, appropriate coding of negatively worded items is necessary when scores are calculated according to the scoring procedure adopted for the instrument.

Data Analysis and Use

IPPA data can be analyzed separately for the Mother, Father, and Friends sections, allowing researchers to examine differences in respondents’ perceptions of these relationships.

Descriptive statistics can be used to summarize responses and scores within each section. Depending on the research design and the scoring framework being used, analyses may also examine specific relational dimensions.

The internal consistency of calculated scores can be evaluated using appropriate reliability coefficients. Relationships between IPPA scores and other study variables may also be investigated through correlational or comparative statistical analyses.

When the three relationship domains are analyzed separately, researchers can identify whether respondents report different patterns of perceived relationship quality across maternal, paternal, and peer relationships.

Applications

The IPPA-25 can be used in research examining parental relationships, peer relationships, interpersonal functioning, communication, trust, and perceived relational support.

The separate assessment of mother, father, and close friends is particularly useful when the research objective is to compare different significant interpersonal relationships.

The instrument may also be administered alongside other psychological or social measures when researchers wish to examine associations between perceived relationship quality and other study variables.

Interpretation of Results

Interpretation of IPPA results should consider the respondent’s relationship with each significant figure separately.

Responses indicating greater trust, communication, understanding, acceptance, and interpersonal availability are consistent with a more positive perception of the relationship.

Responses indicating greater anger, misunderstanding, emotional distance, insufficient attention, loneliness, or difficulty discussing personal concerns reflect more problematic aspects of the perceived relationship.

Examining the Mother, Father, and Friends sections separately is particularly informative because respondents may experience different relational patterns across these three domains.

The source questionnaire itself does not provide normative values, diagnostic thresholds, or clinical cut-off scores. Therefore, scores should be interpreted according to the scoring framework used in the relevant research application rather than as independent clinical diagnoses.

Important Note on the Uploaded Questionnaire

The uploaded document does not contain only the IPPA-25.

Following the Mother, Father, and Friends sections, the document includes an additional set of 28 statements rated from 0 to 4. These items concern experiences such as perspective-taking, compassion, emotional reactions, identification with fictional characters, and responses to emotionally intense or emergency situations.

The document then contains another set of 10 self-evaluation statements, answered using a four-point agreement scale ranging from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree.

These two additional sets of items should therefore be treated separately from the IPPA sections when organizing or analyzing the questionnaire data.