Work-Related Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (WAAQ) Test
How the Scales are Structured
Who Usually Takes This Test?
See How You Compare
Below is a preview of how scores are typically distributed across each scale.
Example Questions From the Test
- Never
- Very rarely
- Rarely
- Sometimes
- Often
- Very often
- Always
- Never
- Very rarely
- Rarely
- Sometimes
- Often
- Very often
- Always
- Never
- Very rarely
- Rarely
- Sometimes
- Often
- Very often
- Always
Work-Related Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (WAAQ) Test - Description and methodology of the test
Employees who want to understand how stress, worry, and self-doubt affect their effectiveness may find a focused starting point here. The Work-Related Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (WAAQ) Test describes whether difficult inner experiences interfere with purposeful action at work. Its result offers a concise view of psychological flexibility, helping readers reflect on coping patterns rather than judging their overall job performance. The assessment helps readers reflect on psychological flexibility in workplace situations and their own work-related functioning.
What This Assessment Measures
The questions examine psychological flexibility in ordinary work situations: whether a person can continue effective action while experiencing distress, nervousness, worry, self-doubt, or uncomfortable feelings. They also address admitting mistakes without treating an error as proof of failure. In practical terms, this work acceptance questionnaire focuses on the relationship between inner experience and functioning, rather than on stress intensity alone.
Results are organized through one scale, Workplace Acceptance and Action (7-49), with the following bands:
- Low flexibility (7-26) indicates more difficulty accepting work-related discomfort while staying effective.
- Moderate flexibility (27-39) suggests that effectiveness may be maintained in some pressured situations but not others.
- High flexibility (40-49) reflects greater ability to experience difficult thoughts and feelings without letting them derail work.
Methodology and Evidence Base
Each statement uses a seven-point frequency scale from Never to Always. The result is reported on one work-focused scale; higher values indicate greater psychological flexibility and willingness to accept work-related difficulties. This is a self-report estimate of perceived functioning across situations, not an observed performance task or clinician-rated interview.
Its principal reference is the published WAAQ developed by Bond and colleagues in 2013, a context-specific measure within the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy tradition. The Spanish WAAQ study by Ruiz and Odriozola-González from 2014 adds evidence from another language and setting, while work by Bond and colleagues from 2011 situates the broader construct measured by the AAQ-II. Together, these sources make the questionnaire conceptually consistent with established work on psychological flexibility at work, but they do not prove that this online presentation has identical norms or psychometric properties.
Interpret the bands as descriptive indicators of your reported pattern, especially in light of current workload and circumstances. Self-report can be influenced by mood, honesty, memory, and self-awareness, so a score is best considered alongside concrete work experiences rather than as a fixed personal trait.
- Bond, Frank W., Joda Lloyd, and Nigel Guenole. (2013). The work-related acceptance and action questionnaire: Initial psychometric findings and their implications for measuring psychological flexibility in specific contexts. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 86(3), 331-347. 10.1111/joop.12001
- Ruiz, Francisco J., and Paula Odriozola-González. (2014). The Spanish version of the Work-related Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (WAAQ). Psicothema, 26(1), 63-68. 10.7334/psicothema2013.110
- Bond, Frank W., Steven C. Hayes, Ruth A. Baer, Kenneth M. Carpenter, Nigel Guenole, Holly K. Orcutt, Tom Waltz, and Robert D. Zettle. (2011). Preliminary psychometric properties of the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II: A revised measure of psychological inflexibility and experiential avoidance. Behavior Therapy, 42(4), 676-688. 10.1016/j.beth.2011.03.007
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