Psychometric Properties of the Body Image Acceptance and Action Questionnaire in Patients with Somatic Symptom and Related Disorders in Kashan City

The Body Image Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (BI-AAQ) assesses cognitive flexibility and acceptance of body image.

This study was done to assess the validity and reliability of the Persian version of BI-AAQ, as an instrument to measure body image flexibility, in patients with somatic symptom and related disorders.

This descriptive psychometric study was done in 2017 on 357 patients with somatic symptom and related disorders selected through a convenient sampling method from Kashan University of Medical Sciences clinics. They responded to the BI-AAQ, Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS), Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II (AAQ-II), and Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory (FMI). The reliability of the BI-AAQ was calculated using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. To assess its validity, the exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used. The gathered data were analyzed via SPSS-22 and Amos-22 software.

This version retained a one-factor structure, similar to the original version of the questionnaire, which explained 42.55% of the variance. It had high internal consistency (0.84), split-half method (0.77), and correlates with AAQ (0.45), mindfulness (0.39) and correlates contrastingly with stress (0.11), anxiety (0.36) and depression (0.43).

According to the results of the current research, the BI-AAQ is a reliable instrument with valid psychometric properties to measure the body image acceptance of individuals in Iranian patients with somatic symptom and related disorders.