Psychometric Evaluation of the Work Acceptance and Action Questionnaire of Psychological Flexibility Modified for University Students

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 (Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 2012). Psychological inflexibility could set the foundation for emotional distress and impair psychosocial and academic functioning. The concept of psychological flexibility applies both to college students with diagnosable mental illnesses and to those experiencing normative stressors such as adjustment to college (Hayes, Pistorello, & Levin, 2012). 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.

Several questionnaires have been developed to assess this construct. For example, the current version of the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire–II (Bond et al., 2011) consists of 7 items reflecting one’s unwillingness to experience thoughts and emotions, inability to maintain contact with the present moment, and difficulty committing to action in pursuit of chosen values. Because psychological flexibility may vary across different populations and life contexts, specific variations of the general measure have been developed to assess this characteristic in specific target populations (Bond, Lloyd, & Guenole, 2013).

As one example, Bond et al. (2013) developed the Work-related Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (WAAQ). The 7 items of the WAAQ ask respondents to rate their ability or willingness to remain engaged in occupational work while experiencing distressing thoughts and emotions. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that these items comprise a single scale that correlated significantly with work engagement (defined as work-related vigor, dedication, and absorption), fewer absences from work, higher job satisfaction, and better task performance.

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, we made minor revisions to the WAAQ so that the items applied explicitly to students enrolled in college. Based on prior research (Bond et al., 2013), we 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, we also expected WAAQ–Student Form scores to have good test–retest reliability over a 2-week period. In support of criterion validity, we 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, we 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.

METHOD

Participants and Procedure

After approval by our institutional review board, we recruited undergraduate students enrolled in one of two introductory psychology courses at a large, public, Midwestern university during the Spring 2014 semester. Members of the research team attended class during the first week of the semester to explain the study, answer questions about the informed consent document, and administer the measures described below. All measures were administered in person during the first full week of the semester (Time 1), in person 2 weeks following initial contact (Time 2), and either in person or...