Testing the model of psychological flexibility in the Serbian cultural context: The psychometric properties of the acceptance and action questionnaire

Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine the theoretical model of psychological flexibility proposed by creators of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. To do this, we investigated the structural and convergent validity of the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire - II, translated into the Serbian language. The study was performed on 1781 Serbian speaking adults. By methods of robust confirmatory factor analysis, two models have been tested. The best fit was achieved with the data-driven model constructed by adding three pairs of correlated residuals to the original hypothesized model of latent structure. This model demonstrated it's structural invariance across samples divided by gender and by previous experience with services provided by mental health professionals. Excellent convergent validity of the scale was demonstrated through adequate correlations with indicators of subjective well-being, styles of emotional regulation, and coping strategies. Our findings suggest that the Serbian adaptation of the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire - II is a valid and reliable measure of behavioral avoidance, implicating that the construct of psychological flexibility has been demonstrated as conceptually similar to those previously found across various languages and cultural contexts.