Clarity of Personal Values and Committed Action: Development of a Shorter Engaged Living Scale

Abstract

The Engaged Living Scale (ELS) is a measure of the process of engaged living, defined by Acceptance and Commitment Therapy as the evaluation and performance of valued life activities. This 16-item measure was recently created and has been validated in middle-aged and chronic pain samples. The aim of the present study was to validate the ELS-16 in a young-adult sample and additionally to develop a shorter ELS. This study was conducted using different samples of Portuguese young-adult college students. The dimensionality of the ELS-16 (which was translated to Portuguese from the original Dutch) was tested through a CFA. The adequacy of the shorter ELS (ELS-9) was also tested through a CFA. The scales' internal reliability and other psychometric qualities were additionally analysed. Results from the CFA suggested that the model benefits from the establishment of correlations between pairs of error terms of items with similar contents. These results led to the decision to shorten the measure by excluding the item of each pair with the lowest communalities. The ELS-9 was then created and its CFA results revealed good to excellent adjustment values and goodness-of-fit indices. Results also showed that the ELS-16 and the ELS-9 present adequate to good psychometric properties. The present study thus shows that these instruments seem to be reliable measures of engaged living and to perform adequately in young-adult college students, with the ELS-9 being a new contribution to health research and allowing faster administrations.

Shame and emotion regulation in inflammatory bowel disease: Effects on psychosocial functioning

“…The ELS-9 Trindade, Ferreira, Pinto-Gouveia, & Nooren, 2015) assesses the process of engaged living, as conceptualized in ACT . Before responding to the scale, participants read a short introduction that clarifies the constructs of engaged living, valuing and the term 'values' (Strosahl et al, 2004) These instruments demonstrated adequate to excellent internal reliabilities (in accordance with Kline's (2000) recommendations) in this study (Table 1).…”

BEfree: A new psychological program for binge eating that integrates psychoeducation, mindfulness, and compassion

“…Cognitive Fusion Questionnaire‐Body Image (Ferreira, Trindade, Duarte, & Pinto‐Gouveia, ) is a 10‐item self‐reported questionnaire based on the original Cognitive Fusion Questionnaire (Gillanders et al, ). The original study presented good internal consistency, retest reliability, discriminant, and convergent and divergent validities (Trindade, Ferreira, Pinto‐Gouveia, & Nooren, ). The current study found an internal consistency of α = .95.…”

“…Engaged Living Scale (Trompetter et al, ) is a self‐report measure developed to assess engagement with values‐driven behaviour. Recently, a 9‐item version of Engaged Living Scale has been used, showing good internal consistency (α = .88; Trindade et al, ). The current study found similar internal consistency (α = .82).…”

“…Recently, a 9-item version of Engaged Living Scale has been used, showing good internal consistency (α = .88; Trindade et al, 2015).…”

Gratitude and loneliness in adults over 40 years: examining the role of psychological flexibility and engaged living

“…On the other hand, people who are engaged in meaningful or valued activities experience increased levels of positive affect and decreased levels of negative affect (Froh, Kashdan, et al, 2010), which are associated with reduced feelings of loneliness (Ditcheva, Vrshek-Schallhorn, & Batista, 2018). In addition, engaged living is associated with decreased psychological distress (Trindade, Ferreira, Pinto-Gouveia, & Nooren, 2016) that might be evident in the form of loneliness. Because living in accordance with deeply held values may be more rooted in older people (Petkus & Wetherell, 2013), it might be beneficial for older adults to clarify values and promote engagement in meaningful or valued activities that might prevent or mitigate the subjective experience of loneliness (Trindade et al, 2016).…”