Validation of the Valuing Questionnaire (VQ) in adults with cardiovascular disease and risk

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcbs.2020.07.006Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Valued-living is important for prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease.

  • Valuing Questionnaire (VQ) is a brief, domain-general self-report of valued living.

  • Results confirm two-factor structure of VQ: valued-living progress and obstruction.

  • VQ factor scores evidence internal consistency, convergent and predictive validity.

  • The VQ is well-suited for use in behavioral medicine research and practice.

Abstract

A common behavioral therapeutic target in the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease is activation of values-consistent living, which can facilitate positive lifestyle behavior change. However, the empirical study of values-consistent living has been limited by significant heterogeneity in measurement due to the absence of a ‘gold-standard’ assessment tool. The Valuing Questionnaire (VQ), a 10-item self-report measure that taps progress in and obstruction of values-consistent living, is well suited for use in research and clinical settings, yet its psychometric properties have been limitedly examined despite its frequent use. The current study utilized data from an anonymous online survey to evaluate the factor structure and psychometric properties of the VQ in adults (n = 252) with a self-reported history of cardiovascular disease or elevated disease risk. Results from a confirmatory factor analyses provided support for the two-factor structure, reflecting progress towards values and obstruction of valued living. Additionally, the VQ factor scores evidenced internal consistency, convergent, concurrent, and incremental predictive validity. VQ factors scores also evidenced known groups validity, distinguishing between those with/without psychological distress. The VQ appears to be an adequate measure of progress and obstruction towards valued-consistent living for use among adults at risk for or with cardiovascular disease. Findings support the use of the VQ in behavioral medicine research and practice.

Section snippets

Participants and procedure

Participants were recruited for a 30-min anonymous online survey study on “health factors and behavior” through a notice posted on the Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) platform. Survey participation was restricted to those individuals identified by Amazon as “masters qualified” workers (i.e., those who “consistently submit high-quality results,” measured by a proprietary quality-assurance algorithm which assesses, among other parameters, accuracy percentage in Human Intelligence Tasks) (Loepp &

Demographics

Participants included adults aged 35 to 81 (M = 47.87, SD = 10.08), and they were 53% female. The sample was predominantly White (73.4%) and Asian (19.0%), with a small minority self-identified as Black (5.2%), Native American (0.8%) or Other (1.6%), and 3.2% of the sample identified as Hispanic. Marital status was reported as married (59.1%), widowed (4.0%), divorced/separated (13.1), and never married (23.4%). Educational attainment was reported as not completing high school (1.2%), high

Discussion

The ability to behave in a values-driven manner, even when it is difficult or uncomfortable to do so, is an important therapeutic target for promotion of positive health behavior change to prevent disease or improve outcomes in patient populations with modifiable medical risk factors (Graham et al., 2016; McCracken & Gutiérrez-Martínez, 2011), including CVD. Findings here support the use of the VQ, a brief self-report measure of values progress and obstruction, in adults with self-reported CVD

Funding

This research was supported in part by funding from a Rutgers University Busch Biomedical Seed Grant to the corresponding author. Rutgers University had no involvement with the content of this project beyond financial support.

Disclosures

All authors have read and approved of the manuscript.

Declaration of competing interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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