AAQ-SA (Substance abuse)

The AAQ for Substance Abuse (AAQ-SA) is a measure of psychological flexibility in relation to substance misuse.

The original paper describing it pscychometric properties is:

Luoma, J. B., Drake, C., Hayes, S. C., Kohlenberg, B. (2011). Substance Abuse and Psychological Flexibility: The Development of a New Measure. Addiction Research and Theory, 19(1), 3-13.

The paper can be downloaded here: http://contextualscience.org/node/5681

Below is the abstract of that study

Psychological flexibility is a relatively new clinical construct targeted by Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, a behavior analytic treatment incorporating mindfulness and values interventions, among other processes. Poor psychological flexibility has been shown to relate to clinical problems as well as normative life challenges, and efforts to increase psychological flexibility have correlated with improvements for a variety of psychological difficulties, including substance abuse. The Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (AAQ) is currently the standard measure of psychological flexibility, but in substance misusing samples, has not shown adequate psychometric properties. Content-specific variants of the AAQ have been effective in other treatment domains, suggesting that a substance abuse focused version of the AAQ may be useful. This paper details the construction and initial validation of such a measure, the AAQ-SA, which demonstrated good internal consistency, factor structure, and construct validity. In addition, the AAQ-SA appeared to be empirically distinguishable from the AAQ. Future researchers are advised to address limitations of the current work and encouraged to expand the empirical database on substance abuse treatment with this new measure.

The measure is attached to this webpage along with scoring instructions.

Jason Luoma March 9, 2011 - 5:59pm

AAQ-SA - Arabic

Elkalla, Ibrahem & El-Gilany, Abdel-Hady & Elwasify, Mohamed. (2020). Acceptance and action questionnaire − substance abuse: translation into arabic, content validity and reliability. Egyptian Journal of Psychiatry, 41(2), 82-88.
Full Text available on the journal website.

Community July 14, 2021 - 9:44pm

AAQ-SA - French

Il s'agit d'une traduction libre du AAQ-SA et qui a été révisée par des membres francophones de la communauté ACBS. Pour usage clinique seulement car elle n'a pas été validée empiriquement. Utile auprès d'une population au prise avec des problématiques reliées à la consommation de drogues et/ou d'alcool.

Jean-Francois Paquin August 19, 2013 - 10:21pm

AAQ-SA - Portuguese

Sequeira, F. & Galhardo, A. (2018) Questionário de Aceitação e Ação para Abuso de Substâncias: desenvolvimento da versão portuguesa, estudo exploratório da estrutura fatorial e propriedades psicométricas. ISMT, Dissertation. The Portuguese AAQ-SA is in the Appendix.

Community July 29, 2021 - 12:40am

AAQ-SA - Spanish

Hilda A. Sánchez-Millán, Alfredo Alicea-Cruz, Coralee Pérez Pedrogo (2021 in press) Measuring psychological flexibility: The cultural adaptation and psychometric properties of the AAQ for substance abuse among Spanish speaking population in correctional and community settings. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcbs.2021.11.002 The Spanish version of the AAQ-SA items are in Appendix A.

Luis Ángel Pérez-Romero, Ariel Vite-Sierra (2020) Midiendo la flexibilidad psicológica: validación del Cuestionario de Aceptación y Acción en el abuso de drogas [Measuring the psychological flexibility: Validationof Acceptance and Action Questionnaire on substance abuse]. Psicología y Salud, 30(1), 95-104. https://doi.org/10.25009/pys.v30i1.2621

Community July 30, 2021 - 11:59pm

AAQ-SA - Turkish

Uygur H, Yavuz KF, Eren I, Uygur OF, Selcuk M, Varsak N, Ozbek Yildirim S, Demirel B. (2020) Reliability and Validity of the Turkish Version of the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-Substance Abuse (AAQ-SA) on a Clinical Sample. Psychiatry and Clinical Psychopharmacology, 30(1), 47-54. DOI: 10.5455/PCP.20200320085704

Community July 31, 2021 - 11:48pm

AAQ-SA - Urdu

An AAQ for Substance Abuse (AAQ-SA) was created in French by Habiba Ilyas and attached to this page. See the file for contact info.

Jason Luoma May 24, 2015 - 4:32pm