229 The Professional Counselor | Volume 14, Issue 3 respect, which could buffer the negative effects of IPV on their self-esteem. Considering the existing literature and theoretical explanations as a whole, it seems reasonable to postulate that childhood attachment might serve as a potential moderator of the association between IPV and self-esteem. Taken together, the literature consistently supports the significance of exploring protective factors contributing to IPV survivors’ healing process, yet no study to date has investigated the potential moderating role of childhood attachment on the association between IPV, adult attachment, and selfesteem in a non-clinical diverse sample. In tackling these gaps, we pose two research questions (RQs): RQ1: How is IPV associated with adult attachment and self-esteem? RQ2: How does childhood attachment moderate the relationships between IPV, adult attachment, and self-esteem? We hypothesized that: 1) IPV victimization is significantly positively associated with adult attachment (i.e., anxious attachment, avoidant attachment) and negatively associated with self-esteem; 2) Childhood attachment moderates the relationship between IPV victimization and adult attachment (i.e., anxious attachment, avoidant attachment); and 3) Childhood attachment moderates the relationship between IPV victimization and self-esteem. Method Sampling Procedures With approval from the university IRB, research recruitment information was posted on various social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, Craigslist, university announcement boards). Individuals who were 18 years of age or older and able to fill out the questionnaire in English were eligible for the study. Participants were directed to an online Qualtrics survey to voluntarily complete the informed consent and the measures listed in the following section. At the end of the survey, participants were prompted to enter their email addresses to win one of 10 $15 e-gift cards. Their email addresses were not included for data analysis. Participants Of the 2,373 voluntary adult participants who took the survey, 1,708 (71.76%) individuals were retained for the final analysis, including 507 (29.68%) participants who experienced IPV in adulthood and 1,191 (69.73%) participants without a history of IPV in adulthood. We eliminated participants who either did not consent to the study (n = 36, 1.51%), were younger than 18 years old (n = 33, 1.39%), or did not complete 95% of the survey questions (n = 596, 25.11%). We examined whether those who were excluded from the sample because of missing or invalid data differed from those who were retained. There was a significant difference in age between the included sample (M = 28.89, SD = 12.38) and excluded sample (M = 32.10, SD = 13.51); t (2,255) = −3.48, p = 0.001. Therefore, excluding participants with missing data was less likely to significantly impact our results. Table 1 shows that 76.23% of the participants were female. The age range of the sample was broad, from 18 to 89 years old, with an average age of 30.
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