Background
Research on gratitude has flourished in recent years. Gratitude has been defined as ‘a generalized tendency to recognize and respond with gratefulness to the role of other people’s benevolence in the positive experiences and outcomes that one obtains’ [
1].
There is a growing body of empirical evidence about the relationship between gratitude and other health-related variables. In a recent study [
2] a negative relationship was found between gratitude and depressive symptoms, and this relationship was mediated by other positive emotions and the tendency to positively reframe negative situations. Other authors [
3] tested a causal model where gratitude seemed to directly foster social support and protect people from stress and depression. Gratitude has also been positively associated with personality traits such as agreeableness, responsibility, and extraversion, and negatively associated with neuroticism [
1,
4].
In adolescents, gratitude has been associated with prosocial behaviour, social integration, and life satisfaction [
5]. There were also several studies that support the link between gratitude and satisfactory social relationships [
6‐
8]. Additionally, other studies suggested that gratitude correlated with positive emotions like vitality, subjective happiness, hope, and optimism, and also with well-being and life satisfaction, both in adults and adolescents [
1,
9‐
12]. However, to date no studies have explored the relationship between prototypic symptoms of eating disorders and gratitude in adolescents. Assessing this relationship is relevant because eating disorders constitute a relevant risk factor for developing serious health problems and psychopathology in adulthood and their onset usually occurs during adolescence [
13,
14]. Therefore, in terms of promoting mental health it is important to explore whether positive emotions such as gratitude are negatively associated with eating disorders.
Gratitude-based interventions constitute another important research area in this field, serving two main purposes. First, to raise awareness about gratitude as a key component in the promotion of wellbeing in both adults and adolescents [
12,
15]. Second, to assess the extent to which gratitude-based interventions could enhance gratitude levels in different populations [
10], which would suggest that gratitude is a dispositional quality that may be cultivated and developed [
3‐
8].
Several instruments have been designed to measure gratitude, including: The Gratitude Resentment and Appreciation scale (GRAT; 44 items; [
15], and its abbreviated version (16 items; [
16]; The Gratitude Adjective Checklist (GAC); [
1] which is used to measure gratitude as an emotion, mood, or disposition; The Gratitude Questionnaire-20 items (G20); [
17]; and The Gratitude Scale [
4], which consists of 18 items that express favourable, neutral, and unfavourable affirmations toward gratitude. However, the most widely used questionnaire which has been validated in several countries, is the Gratitude Questionnaire (GQ- 6) [
1], comprising six items.
The GQ-6 is a self-report questionnaire designed to assess individual differences in people’s disposition to experience gratitude in everyday life. Some authors [
1] considered gratitude as an affective trait they named grateful disposition. The authors initially developed 39 items (including positive and negative ones) with statements about experiences and expressions of gratitude and appreciation in daily life, among others. Through a series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses they developed a robust single factor scale and retained only 6 items that scored high on the first factor, each of them measuring a unique aspect of the grateful disposition. The studies carried out for developing the instrument were conducted with adult and young populations (older than 18), presenting adequate construct validity and reliability [
1,
18].
In terms of studies with younger populations (university students and adolescents), one of the most significant adaptations was removing item 6 (“Long amounts of time can go by before I feel grateful to something or someone”) which showed low correlations with the instrument as a whole. For example, in the Taiwan [
9] and Turkey [
19] GQ-6 validations a 5-item model was found to have a better fit compared to the original 6-item model. Both adaptations showed satisfactory reliability with Cronbach's alphas of .80 and .77, respectively. Froh et al. [
20] confirmed these findings in a study that examined whether the GQ-6 (along with the GRAT and GAC) were valid in a sample of adolescents (ages between 10 and 19). The authors reported that the scale presented acceptable internal consistency with alphas higher than .70, and positive correlations between the GQ-6, the GAC and GRAT for all ages, with weaker correlations at younger ages (10 to 13). Regarding Spanish-speaking countries, a preliminary validation of the instrument was carried out with 369 Chilean university students [
21]. The results showed a single factor solution with the six items and an adequate reliability (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.74).
To date, the Chilean validation of GQ-6 has been carried out only with a relatively small sample of young people in Chile, but without confirmatory analysis to make the measure more robust. It is still unknown how the instrument behaves in adolescent populations and in adults in Chile. To address this gap and to test the generalizability of previous findings in gratitude research, cross-cultural and international samples are needed. Thus, the purpose of this study is to validate the GQ-6 in both adult and adolescent populations in Chile. To accomplish this, two studies were conducted: Study 1 with high school adolescents, and Study 2 with adults from the general population.
Discussion
The goal of these studies was to validate the Chilean version of the Gratitude Questionnaire (GQ-6) in a sample of Chilean adolescents and adults. As far as we know, this is the first study to present the psychometric proprieties of the GQ-6 for a sample of non-English speaking adolescents and adults of the general population.
On regard to adolescents, in terms of construct validity, the results showed (through CFA) that the best factorial model was one-factor with five items. This solution was consistent with previous GQ-6 validations with adolescents from the USA [
20] university/university students from Taiwan and Turkey [
9,
19]. The fit of the five-item version of GQ was also confirmed by qualitative findings: adolescents showed difficulties understanding the meaning of item six. More specifically, it seems that the wording of this item might not be fully apprehended by younger participants [
20]. In addition, the GQ-5 presented a similar reliability to those reported in the studies mentioned above, with Cronbach’s alphas between .70 and .80.
Study 1 also found appropriate divergent validity of the GQ in relation to psychopathological measures, such as depression (assessed with the BDI-I). These results confirmed that gratitude, as a positive emotion, is negatively associated with depressive symptomatology in adolescents [
20,
41]. However, the correlation between gratitude and eating disorders was very weak.
As mentioned above, our rationale to add the EAT-26 scale was that behaviours related to eating disorders constitute relevant risk factors for developing serious health problems and psychopathology in adulthood, and its onset usually occurs during adolescence [
13,
14]. But our analysis did not find a relationship between eating disorders (measured by EAT-26) and gratitude. The hypothesis that gratitude may act as a buffer and protective factor for eating disorders should be further studied.
In Study 2 with adults, we found more robust results, with higher reliability and a higher percentage of the variance explained by the model [
1,
18]. In other words, the results suggested that the younger the participants, the less reliable and lower capacity of the instrument to assess the disposition of gratitude [
9,
19,
20]. Nevertheless, correlations between gratitude and other variables (e.g., optimism, happiness, well-being, spirituality or personality traits) were essentially the same in adults and in university students [
1], but in adolescents, these correlations were relatively lower (e.g., between gratitude and positive and negative affect, and life satisfaction [
20]. These outcomes were confirmed in the present study. For instance, in Study 2, a positive moderate to strong correlation was found between gratitude and happiness (as measured by SHS), but lower negative correlations were found with the risk of eating disorders for adolescents (Study 1).
Study limitations and strengths
The limitations of these studies include the fact that, in contrast to the adult sample study, it was not possible to assess the convergent validity of the GQ-5 in the adolescent sample. Therefore, future studies will have to explore the question if gratitude is positively related to happiness, optimism, life satisfaction, positive affect, among other relevant constructs [
9,
19]. Also, the five item version of the GQ was found in others’ validations and confirmed by CFA in this study, but this version was not reapplied in an adolescent sample to test its psychometric properties as recommended [
42]. The size of the adult sample was relatively small and unbalanced in terms of participants’ gender. Our analysis might have also been enhanced by using additional questionnaires that measured gratitude. Unfortunately, no other validated gratitude scales are available in Chile, which is precisely one of the identified gaps this article tried to address.
The relevance of research on gratitude is supported by recent evidence that suggests that regular experiences of positive emotions can make people more resilient and healthier, reinforcing an upward spiral of optimum performance [
43]. We believe that gratitude can be enhanced and trained to promote and reinforce this kind of upward spiral in people’s lives. Gratitude could serve as a powerful psychological buffer to enhance resilience and well-being [
1,
10,
11,
44], particularly in young people facing relevant risk factors for mental health, including depression and addictions [
12,
45].
The validation of the Chilean version of the GQ-6 will facilitate cross-cultural and international comparison of gratitude research outcomes, promoting a better understanding of the cultural similarities and differences in the way this concept is construed in different cultures. Additionally, providing a reliable measure for the assessment of gratitude in Chilean adolescents and adults will allow researchers, healthcare professionals, educators, and policy makers, to develop and measure the effects of interventions aimed at improving the levels of wellbeing and life quality in a country with one of the highest levels of mental health problems in the OECD [
46].
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the reviewers’ comments which undoubtedly contributed to the improvement of this article.
Part of this research was supported by the Chilean National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development, Project N° 8213005 and the Fund for Innovation and Competitiveness (FIC) of the Chilean Ministry of Economy, Development and Tourism, through the Millennium Scientific Initiative, Grant N° IS130005.
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Authors’ contributions
All the authors have made contributions to conception of this study. All the authors participated in the analysis and interpretation of data and were involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content. CA and GB helped with collecting data and technical support. All the authors have given final approval of the version to be published.