Who is flexible and adaptive in everyday life? Three facets of flexibility and development of the Flexibility Scale (FS-24)

Abstract

Background: How flexible people react to changes, and adapt their behavior and plans, seems to be crucial in modern society. Nevertheless, there has been no common conceptualization of flexibility in the psychological literature. We ran two studies to contribute to the scientific understanding of flexibility as a personality trait and to offer a validated and easy-to-use flexibility questionnaire. Methods & Results: The first explorative study (N = 279) examined three individual-differences concepts of flexibility. Results suggested that flexibility consists of predictability, adaptability, and orderliness, and can be assessed with a 24-item Flexibility Scale (FS-24). The second, confirmatory study (N = 188) replicated the three components. The FS-24 had a good test-retest reliability. Further results provided initial support for the convergent and discriminant validity of FS-24. Conclusions: FS-24 was found to have sufficient psychometrical properties as well as suggested applications in different fields, such as organizational development, or counseling.

A meeting of positive behaviors: The relations of three aspects of flexibility with character strengths

“…The data for the Study 1 was collected as a part of a larger research project, of which parts of the data were published previously (Vylobkova & Heintz, 2022). Recruitment of participants occurred via e-mail, professional social media platforms, such as LinkedIn, and via invitation letters to different companies in Switzerland, Germany, and Austria.…”

“…To measure flexibility, the initial version of the Flexibility Scale (FS-24; Vylobkova & Heintz, 2022) was used. The FS-24 consists of three subscales, predictability (e.g., "I feel uncomfortable with activities that are not clearly defined"), adaptability (e.g., "I can adjust my plans to changing conditions"), and orderliness (e.g., "I like to plan things in advance"), with seven to ten items per subscale.…”

“…However, the study has some limitations. One limitation is the use of the initial version of the FS-24 to assess flexibility, rather than the final version (Vylobkova & Heintz, 2022). One further limitation is the cross-sectional design of the study, which prevents any conclusions on the relationships between flexibility and character strengths in daily behaviors.…”

“…for overview on psychological flexibility see Doorley et al, 2020;Stenhoff et al, 2020). In an attempt to unify these approaches, a recent flexibility measure outlines three aspects of flexibility (Vylobkova & Heintz, 2022): Predictability (planning daily life), adaptability (dealing well with change) and orderliness (following order and rules). Overall, a person is more flexible the less predictable and the more adaptive they are.…”

“…Further, a certain degree of orderliness is needed to coordinate and FLEXIBILITY AND CHARACTER STRENGTHS implement changes. In the present research we focus on flexibility as a personality dimension and adopt a recent measure of flexibility (Vylobkova & Heintz, 2022).…”