Abstract

Acceptance, a third wave cognitive-behavioral concept originally developed for chronic pain patients, was applied to acceptance of chronic illness in an HIV/AIDS population. This study examined the internal reliability of two scales of the chronic illness acceptance questionnaire (CIAQ) called activities engagement (AE), and illness willingness (IW), their relationships with functional outcomes, and their ability to predict functional outcomes after controlling for demographic and medical variables. Sixty-nine HIV-positive persons served as subjects while attending a routine visit at an urban Midwestern US Family Medicine clinic. Mean scores for the AE, IW, and total scales of the CIAQ were slightly higher than pretreatment, but slightly lower than post-treatment scores originally reported for chronic pain patients. Internal reliability values for AE, IW, and total scales of the CIAQ were excellent and consistent with those found in chronic pain acceptance studies. In addition, the AE and IW scales were significantly related to the criterion dimensions of depression, mental functioning, and physical functioning. In multiple regression analyses, it was found that only AE was a significant predictor of the three functional outcome measures beyond demographic and medical variables. In contrast, IW was not predictive of any of the three functional outcome variables.