Living well by letting go: Reliability and validity of a brief measure of nonattachment

There is a growing literature on nonattachment, defined as a flexible, balanced way of relating to experiences without clinging to or suppressing them. We developed a 7-item Nonattachment Scale (NAS-7) by shortening a previously validated 30-item measure (NAS; Sahdra, Shaver & Brown, 2010). NAS-7 was found to display strong psychometric properties in American and Australian samples (total N = 504), including a unidimensional factor structure and measurement invariance across different samples. The correlations of NAS-7 with other theoretically relevant constructs were virtually identical to the long-form NAS. Across different samples, NAS-7 assessed nonattachment was associated with greater autonomous regulation, self-actualization, psychological and subjective well-being, and reduced materialism and depressive symptoms. NAS-7 is a suitable alternative to the long-form NAS as it takes about half the time to complete than the long form without a substantial loss of information.