Gratitude as a moral virtue: a psychometric evaluation of the Gratitude Assessment Questionnaire in Chinese children

Abstract

Gratitude has been previously defined as a tendency to appreciate positives in life, thus conflating gratitude and components of well-being. Accordingly, current measures assessing “gratitude” are primarily based on this conflated conceptualization, and do not adequately assess gratitude as a moral virtue. The Gratitude Assessment Questionnaire (GAQ-C) was developed to assess child virtuous gratitude (VG). This study evaluates the psychometric properties of the GAQ-C in 641 Chinese children (Mage = 10.70, SD = 4.48), showing it to be a reliable and valid measure to assess Chinese child VG. Specifically, results of confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that virtuous gratitude consists of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral components. Furthermore, child VG measured by the GAQ-C was associated positively with parental appreciation socialization, unlike child appreciation assessed by the 6-item Gratitude Questionnaire (GQ-6). Additionally, child VG was related to child depressive symptoms, life satisfaction, daily gratitude behaviors, and prosocial behaviors. Such results provide evidence of conceptual differences between gratitude and appreciation.