Empirical ResearchA psychometric comparison of psychological inflexibility measures: Discriminant validity and item performance
Section snippets
Recruitment
Eligibility criteria for the present study were: (1) at least 18 years old and (2) ability to complete the letter of information and measures in English. Our current sample comprised three groups: undergraduate college students enrolled in psychology classes in the western United States, individuals currently seeking mental health treatment, and community members from Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk).
College students were recruited using fliers on campus and online postings on university websites
Psychological inflexibility
Acceptance and Action Questionnaire – II (AAQ-II; Bond et al., 2011). The AAQ-II is a seven-item measure designed to assess psychological inflexibility. Each item is rated on a seven-point scale ranging from 1 (never true) to 7 (always true). Items include “I'm afraid of my feelings” and “Emotions cause problems in my life.” Responses are summed for a total score ranging from 7 to 49; higher scores indicate higher levels of psychological inflexibility. The AAQ-II has been used to assess
Discriminant validity community sample
AAQ-II. Parallel analysis suggested extraction of four factors and model fit indices showed good fit for the four-factor model (TLI = 0.938, RMSR = 0.023, RMSEA = 0.068). Factor loadings from the EFA of the AAQ-II and DASS-21 are presented in Table 2. AAQ-II items loaded on to one factor with one AAQ-II item cross-loading (i.e., loading ≥ 0.30 for more than one factor) with a factor corresponding to the DASS-21 Depression subscale. That is, the latent constructs measured by the items from each
Discussion
The aims of the present study were to examine two aspects of psychometric validity of psychological inflexibility measures: discriminant validity and item-specific performance. The measures selected for the current study were the AAQ-II, a revised AAQ-II (AAQ-3), BEAQ, and CompACT.
Conclusions
Overall, we found that (1) the CompACT performed most consistently in terms of discriminant validity followed by the AAQ-3, and (2) the Behavioral Awareness and Valued Action subscales were most robust in terms of having consistent sensitivity to individual differences in psychological (in)flexibility. However, the CompACT produced a different factor structure from that in its psychometric development analyses (Francis et al., 2016), potentially pointing to poor structural validity, and showed
Declaration of competing interest
None.
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