Psychometric properties of the Psychological Flexibility Questionnaire among students

Psychological flexibility is a multidimensional trait that plays an important role in many areas of life, including mental health. Given the role of psychological flexibility, researchers have been interested in examining this feature, but do not have the tools to specifically measure psychological flexibility. The purpose of this research is to analyse the reliability and validity of the Persian version of the Psychological Flexibility Questionnaire so that in the absence of a short and specific scale for measuring psychological flexibility, it can help measure this feature in psychological research. For this purpose, 400 male and female students at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad participated in this study in the academic year of 2019-2020 using the multi-stage cluster random sampling method. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were used to evaluate the construct’s validity and calculate the reliability of Cronbachchr('39')s alpha. Factor analysis showed that this questionnaire has 5 factors, which are: positive interpretation of change, defining oneself as a flexible person, identifying oneself as an open and creative person, interpreting reality as dynamic and changeable, and interpreting reality as multidimensional. Agents together accounted for 59.83% of the variance of the entire questionnaire. The internal consistency of the items of the Psychological Flexibility Questionnaire was 0.89, which indicates the desired reliability of this questionnaire. Based on the results of exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis in this study, the Psychological Flexibility Questionnaire has acceptable validity and reliability regarding students.