The Measure Equivalence Across Gender of The Cognitive Fusion Questionnaire (CFQ) for Ecuadorian college students

Background: Cognitive Fusion (CF) limits behavior by perceiving thoughts as real events. It is a crucial process in the evaluation and intervention of contextual therapies. Its measurement is carried out through the Cognitive Fusion Questionnaire (CFQ), which, despite its psychometric analysis in several countries, the studies on its measurement invariance by gender are cases. This lack of information prevents a full understanding of this phenomenon and its comparison by genre. Objective: To evaluate the CFQ measure equivalence across gender, its validity of association with other variables, and its internal consistency using a sample of Ecuadorian university students. Method: Confirmatory factor analyses were designed with the restrictions corresponding to each level of measurement equivalence and the differences between the adjustment indices were evaluated. The validity of association with variables was computed by means of latent relationships and a factorial model was built to evaluate the equivalence of measurement by gender of these correlations. Finally, the total omega for each gender was calculated. Participants: 356 university students (59.1% women), between 18 and 58 years of age (mean= 25.52; sd= 7.51); 43.9% of these students studied in public institutions (43.9%), 27.5% studied in technical and/or technological institutions and 28.6% were enrolled in private institutions. Results: The CFQ shows factorial validity through a unidimensional structure. The equivalence of the measure across gender is strong. Additionally, the CFQ shows validity and coherence with regards to convergence and divergence, and the questionnaire items have high internal consistency. Conclusion: This study significantly expands the knowledge about the psychometric properties of the CFQ in the university population of Ecuador. Women show a greater tendency to CF in the comparison between genders. These findings are valuable for future research to better understand the influence of gender on this phenomenon.