1. Assessing the Construct of Forgiveness: Relations between Two Scales Measuring Trait Forgiveness
Benjamin Parker, Danielle Hernandez, Sean O’Quinn, & Kevin T. Larkin
Department of Psychology, West Virginia University
METHOD
METHOD (Continued)
ANALYSIS & RESULTS
ABSTRACT
The construct of forgiveness is a topic of interest in both areas of positive psychology and health psychology. Despite the increased attention forgiveness has received in both the popular press and scientific literature, uniform methods of assessing the construct of forgiveness have yet to be accepted. In an effort to examine the concurrent validity of two commonly used scales that assess dispositional forgiveness, the Heartland Forgiveness Scale and the Forgiving Personality Inventory were administered to participants. The Heartland Forgiveness Scale is a 24-item, self-report instrument that provides scores in four dimensions of forgiveness: forgiveness of self, forgiveness of others, forgiveness of situation, and pseudo-forgiveness (a validity subscale). The Forgiving Personality Inventory is a 33-item, self-report instrument designed to measure the tendency of an individual to forgive another person for an offense. The total score of the Heartland Forgiveness Scale was significantly correlated with the forgiveness of self (.67), forgiveness of others (.74), and forgiveness of situation (.80) subscales. Among the subscales of the Heartland Forgiveness Inventory, significant relations existed between the forgiveness of self and the forgiveness of situation subscales (.44) and between the forgiveness of others and the forgiveness of situation subscales (.36). Total scores of the Heartland Forgiveness Scale and the Forgiveness Inventory were significantly correlated (r = .78). The total sore of the Forgiveness Inventory was significantly correlated with the forgiveness of self (.32), forgiveness of others (.77), and forgiveness of situation (.59) subscales of the Heartland Forgiveness Scale. These results indicate that while these measures of forgiveness assess similar constructs, the Forgiving Personality Inventory is most strongly related to the forgiveness of others subscale of the Heartland Inventory. In this regard, the Heartland Scale appears to assess forgiveness more broadly than the Forgiveness Inventory.
The Heartland Forgiveness Scale:
The Heartland Forgiveness Scale (HFS; Thompson et al., 2005) is a self-report, 18-item measure of trait forgiveness. The HFS includes the following subscales representing different dimensions of trait forgiveness: Forgiveness of Self, Forgiveness of Others, and Forgiveness of Situations. Each subscale of the HFS contains 6 items. Half of the items on the HFS are constructed to measure forgiveness and half are constructed to measure unforgiveness. Investigations of the psychometric properties of the HFS report satisfactory internal consistency reliability ( ; Thompson et al., 2005). Additionally, the HFS has demonstrated adequate test-retest reliability; for example, a nine-month follow-up from an initial administration yielded a correlation of r = .77 (Thompson et. al). The HFS has demonstrated adequate convergent validity. Specifically, the HFS demonstrated significant relations with the following measures of dispositional forgiveness (Thompson et al.): the Forgiveness of Self & Others Scale (.62; Mauger et al., 1992), the Multidimensional Forgiveness Inventory (.47; Mauger et al.). The HFS also demonstrated significant associations with the Enright Forgiveness Inventory (Subkoviak et al., 1995; Thompson et al) and the McCullough et al.’s (1998) Transgression-Related Interpersonal (Thompson et al.).
Data Analysis
All of the participants in the study had completed an assessment packet, which included the Heartland Forgiveness Scale and the Forgiving Personality Inventory. The data from this administration was entered into a statistical software package and Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients were generated. Correlation coefficient were generated for the association between the total score of the Heartland Forgiveness Scale and the total score of the Forgiving Personality Inventory. Additionally, correlation coefficients were generated between the total score of the Forgiving Personality Inventory and the Forgiveness of Self, Forgiveness of Others, and the Forgiveness of Situations subscales of the Heartland Forgiveness Scale. Finally, correlation coefficients were generated for the associations between the total score of the Heartland Forgiveness Scale and the subscales of the Heartland Forgiveness Scale and for the associations among the subscales of the Heartland Forgiveness Scale.
Key to Table
Heartland Forgiveness Scale: (HFS)
Forgiving Personality Scale: (FPI)
Total Score: (T)
Forgiveness of Self subscale: (FoSF)
Forgiveness of Others subscale: (FoO)
Forgiveness of Situations subscale: (FoST)
Sample Recruitment
The sample from which data was collected for this analysis was drawn from participants in a study examining reported levels of anger, hostility, and forgiveness and measured cardiovascular reactivity to experimental stressor tasks. The sample of participants was recruited from a male population of undergraduate students at West Virginia University. All potential participants were administered the Cook-Medley Hostility Scale (Ho; 1954) as a screening procedure. Individuals who scored in the highest and lowest third of the screening sample were recruited as participants for the laboratory phase of this study. Previous methods of categorizing participants as low or high hostile were examined (see Kurylo & Gallant, 2000 and Rhodes & Harrison, 2002) for classification of participants in this study. Based upon these previously utilized methods in the empirical literature, participants with Ho scores lower than 19 were included in the Low Hostility Group and participants with Ho scores greater than 30 were included in the High Hostility group. Forty-two male participants (21 High Hostile and 21 Low Hostile) from the screening phase were selected to participate in this study based on their responses to the Cook-Medley Hostility Scale.
Measures
The Forgiving Personality Inventory:
The Forgiving Personality Inventory (Drinnon, Jones, & Lawler, 2000) is a 33-item, self-report measure of dispositional forgiveness. Examples of items are, “I tend to hold grudges” and “I believe in the importance of forgiveness.” For each item, a participant responds on a five-point, Likert-type scale from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree the degree to which he/she evaluates the item describes him/herself. The Forgiving Personality Inventory demonstrates satisfactory internal reliability, with an internal consistency coefficient of .93. Additionally, the Forgiving Personality Inventory demonstrates a test-retest correlation of .86 over a two-month period (Lawler et al., 2003).
The Forgiving Personality Inventory has demonstrated significant relations with other measures of forgiveness. For example, the association between the total score of the Forgiving Personality Inventory and the total score of the the Forgiveness of Others scale, a measure of trait forgiveness, (Mauger et al., 1992) yields a correlation of .49 (p < .01). Additionally, the association between the total score of the Forgiving Personality Inventory and the total score of the Enright Forgiveness Inventory (Subkoviak et al., 1995) yields a correlation of .76 (p < .01)
Variable
FPI (T)
HFS (T)
HFS (FoSF)
HFS (FoO)
HFS (FoST) --
.78**
.32*
.59**
.67**
.74**
.80**
.15
.44**
.36*
OBJECTIVE
The construct of forgiveness is receiving ever-increasing attention from psychological science. Within the literature on forgiveness, researchers acknowledge that the assessment of forgiveness represents an important area of growth for empirical investigation. Much of variance in the assessment of forgiveness is due to different conceptualizations of forgiveness utilized for the construction of a measure of forgiveness. The presented analysis was conducted to examine the relations between two measures of dispositional forgiveness.
* p = .05; ** p = .01
CONCLUSIONS
The Heartland Forgiveness Scale and the Forgiving Personality Inventory are two measures of dispositional forgiveness that have been used in empirical investigation and demonstrate a positive, significant relation with each other.
Among the subscales of the Heartland Forgiveness Scale, the Forgiving Personality Inventory was most strongly related to the Forgiveness of Others Subscale. These results indicate that while both measures of forgiveness assess similar constructs, the Heartland Forgiveness Scale appears to offer a broader assessment of forgiveness.