Gratitude Questionnaire-6

GQ-6

psychologysocial sciencesFree for research use

Permission: Free for research use. Free for non-commercial academic research, with no license fee. Cite the original publication.

A 6-item unidimensional measure of dispositional gratitude: the tendency to notice and appreciate the positive in life.

Items

Response format

7-point Likert

Version

1.0

Ready-to-cite methods sentence

Dispositional gratitude was measured with the Gratitude Questionnaire-6 (GQ-6; McCullough et al., 2002), a 6-item scale with good internal consistency (α ≈ .82).

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Reliability & validation

Validation population

Undergraduates and community adults (McCullough et al., 2002)

Cronbach's α

0.82

Response anchors

Strongly disagree · Disagree · Slightly disagree · Neutral · Slightly agree · Agree · Strongly agree

Known limitations

Brief and trait-level; correlates strongly with general positive affect and agreeableness, which raises questions about discriminant validity.

Original citation

McCullough, M. E., Emmons, R. A., & Tsang, J.-A. (2002). The grateful disposition: A conceptual and empirical topography. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(1), 112-127.

https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.82.1.112

Questions researchers ask

What does the GQ-6 measure?

A 6-item unidimensional measure of dispositional gratitude: the tendency to notice and appreciate the positive in life.

How many items does the GQ-6 have?

The Gratitude Questionnaire-6 (GQ-6) has 6 items.

Is the GQ-6 free to use?

The GQ-6 is free to use for non-commercial academic research. You don't need to pay a license fee, but you should always cite the original publication.

Is the GQ-6 reliable?

Validation studies report Cronbach's α of 0.82. See the reliability section for the population studied and full statistics.

Who developed the GQ-6, and how do I cite it?

McCullough, M. E., Emmons, R. A., & Tsang, J.-A. (2002). The grateful disposition: A conceptual and empirical topography. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82(1), 112-127. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.82.1.112

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Library entry verified July 2026. Metadata is provided for reference. Questionnaires are built in Folio Surveyor, subject to each instrument's licensing, and can be taken to Qualtrics, Google Forms or Microsoft Forms, with their CSV responses brought back for scoring.