A review of AAQ variants and other context-specific measures of psychological flexibility

Psychological flexibility refers to a way of interacting with internal experiences and the external environment that advances one toward chosen values whereas psychological inflexibility reflects rigid adherence to ineffective responses such that valued living is compromised. Psychological flexibility is a critical variable of interest in acceptance and commitment therapy, thus, accurate assessment of this construct is pertinent to professionals in the field. Numerous measures of psychological flexibility for specific conditions exist and the psychometric validation of each of these measures varies in breadth and depth. To orient professionals to the scope of available measures as well as their psychometric properties, the current review summarizes the existing literature on context-specific measures of psychological flexibility. Most measures demonstrated satisfactory basic psychometric properties, though their clinical utility (e.g., treatment sensitivity) has largely been underexplored. Generally, context-specific measures performed better than a generic measure of psychological flexibility with respect to incremental validity and treatment sensitivity. Still, further research is needed to validate these measures (e.g., discriminant validity) in order to justify their use across settings and study designs.