Cross-Cultural Adaptation and Psychometric Evaluation of the Trauma Bonding Scale for Adults in Intimate Relationships: Evidence from Samples in Türkiye and Italy

Trauma bonding refers to a persistent emotional attachment to a harmful or abusive partner despite fear, dependency, relational harm, and difficulty disengaging. Although the Trauma Bonding Scale for Adults (TBSA) directly assesses this construct, it was originally developed for sex trafficking contexts, making validation in intimate relationships necessary. This study adapted the TBSA to intimate relationship contexts and evaluated the resulting Intimate Relationships TBSA (IRTBSA) among adults in current romantic relationships in Türkiye and Italy. Using a quantitative cross-sectional validation design, the scale underwent forward-backward translation, contextual adaptation, expert review, and cognitive pretesting before online self-report data were collected from 483 participants in Türkiye and 456 in Italy. Structural validity was examined through confirmatory factor analyses, internal reliability with Cronbach’s alpha, and convergent validity through correlations with psychologically controlling partner behaviors, shame, depressive symptoms, and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms. The initial 30-item one-factor model did not show adequate fit in either sample. After statistical and conceptual item evaluation, five items were removed. The one-factor model estimated for the IRTBSA-25 showed acceptable fit, with high internal consistency in the Turkish (α = .96) and Italian (α = .95) samples. IRTBSA-25 scores were positively associated with restrictive engulfment victimization, shame, depressive symptoms, and PTSD symptoms, supporting convergent validity. Findings provide initial evidence that the IRTBSA-25 is a reliable and valid measure of trauma bonding in current romantic relationships, while future research should examine measurement invariance, clinical utility, longitudinal change, and diverse samples.