A Penny for Your Thoughts? : Development and Validation of a Revised Measure of Rumination

The present research sought to demonstrate the utility, validity, and reliability of a new measure of rumination assessing both the intentionality and valence of ruminative thought. The Intentionality and Valence of Work-Related Ruminations Questionnaire (IV-WRRQ) is developed based on Martin and Tesser\u27s (1996) goal progress theory of rumination and existing approaches across various sub-disciplines in psychology. Specifically, it is designed to assess four distinct forms of rumination: deliberate-positive, deliberate-negative, intrusive-positive, and intrusive negative rumination. Initial expert ratings provided insight into the initial construct validity, face validity, and readability of the items. The measure was further refined in a study among MTurk workers (N = 151) using two separate surveys separated by a two-week time interval in line with best practices. The second study was conducted among a sample of college students (N = 288) in order to provide further evidence of the validity and reliability of the new measure. The IV-WRRQ ultimately demonstrated good internal consistency, convergent validity with existing rumination measures, divergent validity with psychological detachment, and predictive validity with regard to important positive and negative outcomes in affective, cognitive, physical, and health-related domains, in some cases over and above a popular, previously validated measure of rumination