Validation of the Avoidance and Inflexibility Scale (AIS) Among Treatment-Seeking Smokers

The Avoidance and Inflexibility Scale (AIS; Gifford et al., 2004) was derived as a smoking-specific measure of experiential avoidance. However, there has been little investigation of the psychometric proprieties of the AIS and no published work on the topic. The current study aimed to test the relia...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychological assessment 2015-06, Vol.27 (2), p.467-477
Main Authors: Farris, Samantha G., Zvolensky, Michael J., DiBello, Angelo M., Schmidt, Norman B.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptability (Personality)
Adolescent
Adult
Aged
Anxiety - psychology
Avoidance
Avoidance Learning
Depression - psychology
Discriminant analysis
Experiential Avoidance
Exploratory Factor Analysis
Factor Analysis
Factor Analysis, Statistical
Female
Health Care Seeking Behavior
Human
Humans
Male
Middle Aged
Patient Acceptance of Health Care
Psychometrics
Quantitative psychology
Rating Scales
Reproducibility of Results
Smoking - psychology
Smoking Cessation
Test Validity
Tobacco Smoking
Tobacco Use Disorder - psychology
Young Adult
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The Avoidance and Inflexibility Scale (AIS; Gifford et al., 2004) was derived as a smoking-specific measure of experiential avoidance. However, there has been little investigation of the psychometric proprieties of the AIS and no published work on the topic. The current study aimed to test the reliability and validity of the AIS among a sample of adult treatment-seeking daily smokers (n = 465; 48.2% female, 17.8 [SD = 9.60] cigarettes per day). The AIS was administered at 3 time points (baseline, quit-day, and 1 month postquit) as part of a larger smoking cessation trial. An exploratory factor analysis indicated a 2-factor solution, described by inflexibility and avoidance because of smoking related "thoughts/feelings" (9 items) and "somatic sensations" (4 items). Results revealed that the AIS-total and factor scores demonstrated high internal consistency and test-retest reliability. The AIS total and factor scores also displayed high convergent, discriminant, and incremental predictive validity with theoretically relevant smoking and affective variables. The present data suggest that the AIS measure appears to be a valid and reliable smoking-specific index of experiential avoidance.
ISSN:1040-3590
1939-134X
DOI:10.1037/pas0000059