A psychometric comparison of psychological inflexibility measures: Discriminant validity and item performance

Psychological inflexibility and mental health symptoms during the COVID-19 lockdown in Spain: A longitudinal study

“…That is, we found that GHQ-12 scores were considerably less stable (increased more) than their corresponding AAQ-II scores. It is also worth noting that other IRT-based research ( Ong et al, 2020 ) suggests that no single psychological flexibility measure has proved to be superior to the rest. In addition, in defense of our choice of measures, we would like to note that both focal measures are brief, easily accessible for a timely implementation, and have been psychometrically validated and amply tested with Spanish-speaking populations.…”

Increases in Psychological Flexibility Mediate Relationship Between Acute Psychedelic Effects and Decreases in Racial Trauma Symptoms Among People of Color

“…In addition to the limitations above, several concerns have been raised about the AAQ-II as a measure of psychological flexibility. Recent studies have explored the convergent and discriminant validity of the AAQ-II compared to other measures of psychological flexibility and experiential avoidance, [66][67][68] suggesting the AAQ-II may be more strongly related to negative affect and personality constructs, than to features theorized as the core aspects of psychological flexibility. Secondly, there may be questionable face validity of the items included on the AAQ-II, such that they may be more related to psychopathology rather than psychological flexibility.…”

Intervention and Mediation Effects of Target Processes in a Randomized Controlled Trial of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Anxious Cancer Survivors in Community Oncology Clinics

“…First, experiential avoidance, a core theorized ACT target process, should be measured using instruments that do not conflate experiential avoidance with negative affect and distress, a criticism of the most widely used ACT process measure (Tyndall et al, 2019;Wolgast, 2014), the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II (AAQ-II; Bond et al, 2011). In addition, if the AAQ-II is used, then versions that probe experiential avoidance in specific relevant contexts may yield more accurate estimates of behavior (Ong et al, 2020). Second, given psychometric problems with other common measures of core theorized ACT target processes, such as measures of values-aligned behavior (Reilly et al, 2019), researchers should consider using multiple instruments of the same target process, probing the construct in different ways.…”

“…The present study highlights that, in such real-world contexts, evidence-based interventions may not operate according to the theoretically expected mechanisms, a finding that should be further explored in both oncology and more general patient populations and settings. Another key strength of this study was its measurement of values-aligned behavior and experiential avoidance with two instruments each, and its use of a more psychometrically sound measure (i.e., the BEAQ; Tyndall et al, 2019) and a context-specific measure (i.e., the AAQc; Ong et al, 2020) of experiential avoidance.…”