Background: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) aims to help individuals live a life congruent to their values by cultivating psychological flexibility (PF); the ability to respond to experiences with acceptance and creativity. Concurrently, Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) addresses the role of self-attacking cognitions on psychological difficulties. Recent work suggests that integrating aspects of CFT into an ACT approach (i.e. developing a person’s PF to self-attacking thoughts through self-compassion) may offer additional therapeutic value. There remains no assessment of this specific therapeutic process. Aims: The project aimed to develop and validate a new scale to assess flexibility of responses to self-critical thoughts (FoReST). Methods: Factor Analysis was used to explore factor structure of the FoReST in a convenience sample of 253 adults. Construct validity was explored by comparing FoReST with measures of similar constructs (PF, self-compassion, self-criticism) and potentially related outcomes (anxiety, depression, quality of life). Findings: Alternative 2-factor (‘unworkable action’ and ‘avoidance’) and 1-factor (‘unworkable action’) versions of the FoReST showed high concurrent validity with similar measures, good predictive validity for mental health and wellbeing outcomes and good internal consistency. The relative strengths and weaknesses of both versions are discussed. Recommendations: Findings indicate that the FoReST may offer a useful clinical and research tool for emerging forms of ACT for people high in self-criticism. Future research will be required to confirm the factor structure of the FoReST, confirm concurrent, predictive validity, test-retest reliability, and validate the scale in relevant clinical populations.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:631023 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Larkin, Peter |
| Publisher | University of Glasgow |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://theses.gla.ac.uk/5684/ |
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