[Reanalysis of the Bielefeld Partnership Expectations Questionnaire (BFPE)].

The results of a reanalysis of the Bielefeld Partnership Expectations Questionnaire (BFPE) are reported. The BFPE is a tool for the operationalisation of attachment patterns of adults. In two respects it differs from other attachment questionnaires: First, attachment patterns are operationalised qualitatively as configurations of scale scores. Second, five attachment patterns were empirically found by cluster-analysis. The sample used for the reanalysis (n = 1506) is representative for the German population at the age of 18 to 50 years. Factor analysis of the items confirmed the three scales of the BFPE: "Fear of Rejection", "Readiness for Self Disclosure" and "Conscious Need for Care", which yield good psychometric properties. Cluster analysis ("Ward" and "k-means") also confirmed the five attachment patterns. Three of them ("avoiding withdrawing", "ambivalent-clinging", and "ambivalent-withdrawing") resemble the "insecure" patterns found by Bartholomew & Horowitz . Two result from a partition of the pattern, otherwise identified as "secure", one representing a primary strategy ("secure") the other ("partially secure") representing a special form of the secondary deactivating strategy following Main . The reason of such a division is theoretically discussed, and its usefulness supported by empirical findings.