David D. Cotter

Doctoral Dissertation Announcement

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Candidate: David D. Cotter

Degree of: Doctor of Philosophy

Department: Psychology

Title: Psychometric Evaluation of the Valued Living Questionnaire: Comparing Distressed and Normative Samples

Committee:
Dr. Scott Gaynor, Chair
Dr. Amy Naugle
Dr. Galen Alessi
Dr. Susan Baird

Date: Friday, June 10, 2011 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.
3715 Wood Hall

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 along with Importance and Consistency subscales (α = .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). Unlike Wilson et al., the factor structure was multi-dimensional (not unitary) and differed between the normative and distressed samples. However, work-education, family-parenting, and friends-recreation-self care appear to cluster across samples. With respect to validity, the VLQ Composite and subscales were significantly higher among the normative than distressed samples (p < .001) and correlated positively (at a Bonferroni corrected α level of .003) 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.