Validation of a Spanish translation of the Gratitude Questionnaire (GQ-6) with a Chilean sample of adults and high schoolers

Langer et al. Health and Quality of Life Outcomes (2016) 14:53 DOI 10.1186/s12955-016-0450-6 RESEARCH Open Access Validation of a Spanish translation of the Gratitude Questionnaire (GQ-6) with a Chilean sample of adults and high schoolers Álvaro I. Langer1,2* , Valentina G. Ulloa3, José M. Aguilar-Parra4, Claudio Araya-Véliz5 and Gonzalo Brito6 Abstract Background: Recent studies have associated positive emotions with several variables such as learning, coping strategies or assertive behaviour. The concept of gratitude has been specifically defined as a tendency to recognise and respond to people or situations with grateful emotion. Unfortunately in Latin America, no validated measures of gratitude on different populations are available. The aim of this study was to analyse the psychometric properties of the Gratitude Questionnaire (GQ-6) in two Chilean samples. Methods: Two studies were conducted: the first with 668 high school adolescents (390 women and 278 men, with ages ranging between 12 and 20, and a mean age 15.54 ± 1.22) and the second with 331 adults (231 women and 100 men, with an average age of 37.59 ± 12.6). An analysis of the psychometric properties of the GQ-6 scale to determine the validity and reliability of the instrument in Chilean adolescents and adults was performed. Bivariate correlations, multiple regression analyses, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and Monte Carlo simulations were carried out. Finally, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed. Results: A single-factor solution was found in both studies, a 5 item version for the adolescents and 6 items for adults. This factorial solution was invariant across genders. Reliability of the GQ was adequate in both samples (using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient). In addition convergent and discriminate validity were assessed. Additionally, a negative correlation between the GQ-5 and depression in adolescents and a positive correlation between the GQ-6 and happiness in adults was found. Conclusions: The GQ is a suitable measure for evaluating a person’s disposition toward gratitude in Chilean adolescents and adults. This instrument may contribute to the advancement of the study of positive emotions in Latin America. Keywords: Positive psychology, Gratitude, Adolescence, Validity, Confirmatory factor analysis Background Research on gratitude has flourished in recent years. Gratitude has been defined as ‘a generalized tendency to recognize and respond with gratefulness to the role of other people’s benevolence in the positive experiences and outcomes that one obtains’ [1]. * Correspondence: 1 Laboratory of Experimental Psychology (UACh/CISNe), Faculty of Medicine, Austral University of Chile, Campus Isla Teja s/n, Valdivia, Chile 2 Red de Salud Mental RedGesam, Santiago, Chile Full list of author information is available at the end of the article There is a growing body of empirical evidence about the relationship between gratitude and other healthrelated variables. In a recent study [2] a negative relationship was found between gratitude and depressive symptoms, and this relationship was mediated by other positive emotions and the tendency to positively reframe negative situations. Other authors [3] tested a causal model where gratitude seemed to directly foster social support and protect people from stress and depression. Gratitude has also been positively associated with personality traits such as agreeableness, © 2016 Langer et al. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Langer et al. Health and Quality of Life Outcomes (2016) 14:53 responsibility, and extraversion, and negatively associated with neuroticism [1, 4]. In adolescents, gratitude has been associated with prosocial behaviour, social integration, and life satisfaction [5]. There were also several studies that support the link between gratitude and satisfactory social relationships [6–8]. Additionally, other studies suggested that gratitude correlated with positive emotions like vitality, subjective happiness, hope, and optimism, and also with well-being and life satisfaction, both in adults and adolescents [1, 9–12]. However, to date no studies have explored the relationship between prototypic symptoms of eating disorders and gratitude in adolescents. Assessing this relationship is relevant because eating disorders constitute a relevant risk factor for developing serious health problems and psychopathology in adulthood and their onset usually occurs during adolescence [13, 14]. Therefore, in terms of promoting mental health it is important to explore whether positive emotions such as gratitude are negatively associated with eating disorders. Gratitude-based interventions constitute another important research area in this field, serving two main purposes. First, to raise awareness about gratitude as a key component in the promotion of wellbeing in both adults and adolescents [12, 15]. Second, to assess the extent to which gratitude-based interventions could enhance gratitude levels in different populations [10], which would suggest that gratitude is a dispositional quality that may be cultivated and developed [3–8]. Several instruments have been designed to measure gratitude, including: The Gratitude Resentment and Appreciation scale (GRAT; 44 items; [15], and its abbreviated version (16 items; [16]; The Gratitude Adjective Checklist (GAC); [1] which is used to measure gratitude as an emotion, mood, or disposition; The Gratitude Questionnaire-20 items (G20); [17]; and The Gratitude Scale [4], which consists of 18 items that express favourable, neutral, and unfavourable affirmations toward gratitude. However, the most widely used questionnaire which has been validated in several countries, is the Gratitude Questionnaire (GQ- 6) [1], comprising six items. The GQ-6 is a self-report questionnaire designed to assess individual differences in people’s disposition to experience gratitude in everyday life. Some authors [1] considered gratitude as an affective trait they named grateful disposition. The authors initially developed 39 items (including positive and negative ones) with statements about experiences and expressions of gratitude and appreciation in daily life, among others. Through a series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses they developed a robust single factor scale and retained only 6 items that scored high on the first factor, each of them measuring a unique aspect of (...truncated)