Whenever an attribute is empty WordPress filters decide just not to show the attribute so a simple test for this is the following:
function menu_anchor_attributes ( $atts, $item, $args ) {
$atts['data-menuanchor'] = ( ! empty( $item->attr_title ) ) ? $item->attr_title : 'test';
return $atts;
}
add_filter( 'nav_menu_link_attributes', 'menu_anchor_attributes', 10, 3 );
This way, if a title attribute hasn’t been filled into the back-end it will still display the attribute with a value of test
.