Accountability : construct definition and measurement of a virtue vital to flourishing
Abstract
Embracing accountability to others for one’s responsibilities within relationships is important for flourishing, yet underexamined. An interdisciplinary team defined the construct of accountability and developed an 11-item single-factor Accountability Scale. In national samples with US census demographic representation (total N = 1257), we conducted psychometric analyses using methods from classical test theory (exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses) and item response theory. The Accountability Scale demonstrated internal consistency, construct validity, test-retest reliability, and incremental validity. Accountability correlated positively with relational variables (agreeableness, empathy) responsibility-oriented variables (conscientiousness, self-regulation), virtues (gratitude, forgiveness, limitations-owning humility), relational repair, perceived meaning presence, and flourishing, inversely with symptoms (personality disorders, temper, anxiety, depression), and weakly with searching for meaning and social desirability. Accountability scores superseded demographic variables, conscientiousness, and agreeableness to predict relational repair, perceived presence of meaning in life, and flourishing. We offer the accountability construct and scale to advance human flourishing research and applied work.
Citation
Witvliet , C V O , Jang , S J , Johnson , B , Evans , C S , Berry , J , Leman , J , Roberts , R , Peteet , J , Torrance , A B & Hayden , A 2022 , ' Accountability : construct definition and measurement of a virtue vital to flourishing ' , The Journal of Positive Psychology , vol. Latest Articles . https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2022.2109203
Publication
The Journal of Positive Psychology
Status
Peer reviewed
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
Description
This work was supported by a grant from the Templeton Religion Trust (TRT0171).Collections
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