Do You Live Your Values?: Taking the Valued Living Questionnaire

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood . . .”
- Robert Frost

Almost three years ago, I had my first experience with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. I participated in a study that tested a combination of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and ACT techniques in a group therapy setting. I learned, ultimately, that ACT strategies were more intuitive and useful for me than CBT strategies. I was intrigued by the philosophy that underpinned the ACT approach to therapy. In a nutshell, ACT asks you to take a step back from your thoughts and feelings, acknowledge and accept them, practice mindfulness, and take action in line with your values in spite of negative thoughts and feelings. A central principle of ACT states that a great deal of distress comes from living a life that does not enact one’s values. I encourage anyone who is interested in ACT to check out contextualscience.org, where many leading ACT clinicians and researchers write about their work.

To determine my eligibility for the CBT/ACT study, I had to take a number of tests, such as the Beck inventories that have been mentioned in class, and have an interview with the clinician in charge of the group. Among the tests, one short questionnaire, called the Valued Living Questionnaire, stands out in my memory. In the VLQ questionnaire, which was developed by ACT clinicians, the test taker must first rate ten life domains in terms of personal importance on a Likert scale from 1 (not at all important) to 10 (extremely important). These life domains include areas such as family relationships, spirituality, and physical well-being. The test instructions emphasize that valuing in these areas of life is a personal choice, and unique to every individual. In the second part of the questionnaire, the test taker must rate how consistent his or her actions have been with each value over the past week. The first time that I encountered this questionnaire, I was in the middle of a year of loss and uncertainty. The process of identifying what was important to me was a puzzling exercise in itself — my yellow wood felt more like the haunted forest of Oz at the time. This exercise, however, and the task of evaluating my actions in light of my values began to reorient how I see myself and how I live my life. I consider the test itself as a crucial first step on my ACT path.

For a fascinating article on the development of the VLQ, including the definition of the construct “value,” and studies on the reliability and validity of the questionnaire, check out the article below.

Wilson, K. G., Sandoz, E. K., Kitchens, J., & Roberts, M. (2011). The Valued Living Questionnaire: Defining and measuring valued action within a behavioral framework. The Psychological Record, 60(2), 4. Link to PDF.

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