ERIC Number: EJ1163793
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2017-Nov
Pages: 5
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0897-5264
EISSN: N/A
Psychometric Evaluation of the Work Acceptance and Action Questionnaire of Psychological Flexibility Modified for University Students
Lang, Brent; Rosenberg, Harold; Lauritsen, Kirstin; Davis, Alan K.; Cross, Nicole
Journal of College Student Development, v58 n8 p1256-1260 Nov 2017
According to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), "psychological flexibility" refers to an individual's ability to maintain mindful awareness of his or her thoughts and emotions in the present moment while behaving according to his or her personal values. Psychological inflexibility could set the foundation for emotional distress and impair psychosocial and academic functioning. Although there is no standard threshold for defining low, moderate, or high levels of flexibility, faculty advisors, career counselors, university counseling center staff, and other student affairs personnel may want to identify those students whose inflexibility indicates they may have difficulty completing their school work or adjusting to college life because of their worries and self-doubt. The 7 items of the Work-related Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (WAAQ) ask respondents to rate their ability or willingness to remain engaged in occupational work while experiencing distressing thoughts and emotions. The WAAQ could be administered to assess the psychological flexibility of university students, but the items on the WAAQ make reference to "work," which could be interpreted by students as referring to part-time or full-time employment, rather than to their school work as students. This ambiguity is easily remedied with minor modification of the items on the WAAQ to refer explicitly to "school work" and "course work," thereby distinguishing these terms from "work" not otherwise specified. Given the applicability of ACT in university counseling and other student affairs contexts, and the value of context-specific measures of psychological flexibility, the authors made minor revisions to the WAAQ so that the items applied explicitly to students enrolled in college. The authors anticipated that the items on the Work Acceptance and Action Questionnaire--Student Form would load on a single factor and have high internal consistency reliability. Because it assesses a relatively stable characteristic, they also expected WAAQ--Student Form scores to have good test-retest reliability over a 2-week period. In support of criterion validity, the authors anticipated that higher scores on the WAAQ--Student Form would be associated with higher positive affect, lower negative affect, lower perceived stress, and higher college student adjustment at initial assessment. Finally, as an evaluation of predictive validity, they tested whether higher levels of college-specific work-related psychological flexibility assessed during the first week of the spring semester was associated with higher positive affect, lower negative affect, lower stress, and better adjustment 3 months later.
Descriptors: Questionnaires, Factor Analysis, Predictive Validity, Undergraduate Students, Introductory Courses, Correlation, Comparative Analysis, Test Reliability, Multiple Regression Analysis
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A