Development and preliminary validation of the value clarity questionnaire in adults and adolescents

Engaging in behavior that is congruent with the qualities of character to which we aspire is the key behavioral outcome sought in several evidence-based psychotherapies (eg,“valued action” within Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) and moral education (eg,“character sought” within Neo-Aristotelian Character Education). However, we cannot deliberately engage in valued action without first thinking through the qualities of character to which we aspire. We therefore developed a novel measure of “value clarity” and established its construct validity. Across two adult samples and one adolescent sample, we established the following psychometric properties of the seven-item Value Clarity Questionnaire: factor structure, concurrent validity, discriminant validity, internal reliability, rest-retest reliability, predictive validity, and incremental criterion validity. Value clarity predicted multiple aspects of flourishing including engaged living, depression, behavioral activation, assertiveness, productiveness, and energy levels over and above known predictors. This measure will be especially useful for assessing the efficacy of values/moral clarification interventions.