Serious concerns have been raised regarding the validity of popular experiential avoidance measures. We developed a new “experiential avoidance rating scale” (EARS) to address some of the psychometric concerns with existing measures. Candidate items were generated according to the original functional contextual definition of experiential avoidance and reviewed by experts and public members for content validity and readability. Items then underwent validation involving n = 3628 participants. Exploratory factor analyses (n = 1069) identified six items with good underlying common variance. Confirmatory factor analyses from college student (n = 1068) and community samples (n = 1413) demonstrated excellent fit. In all samples, the EARS demonstrated evidence of content, factorial, concurrent, convergent, and discriminant validity. The EARS also demonstrated evidence of incremental validity by predicting significant additional variance above-and-beyond neuroticism and extant experiential avoidance measures in depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, alcohol use problems, and general mental health measures. Measurement invariance analyses indicated that the EARS demonstrated residual (strict) invariance between cisgender men and women; clinical and non-clinical participants; White Non-Hispanic, White Hispanic, Black, and Asian participants; and heterosexual and bisexual individuals. We suggest that the EARS be further investigated as a brief measure of experiential avoidance in additional studies, particularly with clinical populations. We also discuss areas of future psychometric study and implications.

人们对流行的经验性回避措施的有效性提出了严重担忧。我们开发了一种新的“体验式回避评级量表”（EARS）来解决现有措施的一些心理测量问题。候选项目是根据体验性回避的原始功能语境定义生成的，并由专家和公众成员审查内容的有效性和可读性。然后项目接受了涉及n = 3628 名参与者的验证 。探索性因素分析 ( n  = 1069) 确定了六个具有良好潜在共同方差的项目。来自大学生 ( n  = 1068) 和社区样本 ( n  = 1413) 的验证性因素分析显示出极好的拟合度。在所有样本中，EARS 都证明了内容有效性、阶乘有效性、并发有效性、收敛有效性和判别有效性的证据。EARS 还通过预测在抑郁、焦虑、创伤后应激、酒精使用问题和一般心理健康措施方面超出神经质和现有体验性回避措施的显着额外方差，证明了增量有效性的证据。测量不变性分析表明，EARS 证明了顺性别男性和女性之间的残余（严格）不变性；临床和非临床参与者；非西班牙裔白人、西班牙裔白人、黑人和亚洲参与者；以及异性恋和双性恋者。我们建议在其他研究中，特别是在临床人群中，进一步研究 EARS，作为体验性回避的简要衡量标准。我们还讨论了未来心理测量研究的领域及其影响。