Date of Award

8-2011

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Dr. Scott T. Gaynor

Abstract

The Valued Living Questionnaire (VLQ; Wilson, 2002) was created to measure the extent to which an individual contacts his/her chosen values, an important construct in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT; Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 1999). The goal of the current study was to contribute to the psychometric evaluation of the VLQ by replicating and extending the first study of the VLQ’s psychometric properties conducted by Wilson, Sandoz, Kitchens, & Roberts (2010). In the present study, the VLQ was administered to a normative collegian sample (n = 171, M age = 19.32) and a distressed sample of collegians who were participating in clinical outcome studies (n = 111, M age = 21.14). With respect to reliability, good internal consistency was found with both the distressed and normative samples and across the VLQ Composite and Importance and Consistency subscales (∝ = .72 – .79). Additionally, good 3-week test-retest reliability was observed, especially for the Composite (r = .74) and Importance subscale (r = 76). As would be expected, a somewhat lower test-retest reliability was found on the Consistency subscale (r = .67). Similar to Wilson et al., three eigenvalues greater than 1.0 (a common criteria for retaining factors) were found within the normative group while within the distressed sample four eigenvalues greater than 1.0 were found. Across both the normative and distressed samples, work-education, family-parenting, and friendsrecreation- self care appeared to cluster. With respect to validity, the VLQ Composite and subscales were significantly higher among the normative than distressed samples (p < .001) and correlated (at a Bonferroni corrected ∝ level of .003) positively with measures of adaptive functioning, negatively with measures of maladaptive functioning, and negligibly with impression management and grade point. Overall, the data support the general reliability and validity of the VLQ for use with normative and distressed collegian samples and are generally consistent with the ACT model of psychopathology.

Access Setting

Dissertation-Open Access

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