The Enright Forgiveness Inventory (EFI) purports to measure a persons level of forgiveness. Now available in many languages, it joins the list of Western psychological inventories that have been exported to other cultures in the name of cross-cultural research. Actually, this constitutes intercultural research, as one culture (or here, its inventory) interacts with another (here, the respondents). For this study, back-translation and a questionnaire were used to evaluate the Mandarin EFI (MEFI) as a tool of intercultural research. Chinese and Western cultural differences relevant to forgiveness were also examined. <p> Respondents were asked to provide Mandarin characters to match Enrights definition of forgiveness and a definition of tolerance. These were associated with selected characters, Chinese sayings, and MEFI items. The resulting data show little consensus regarding respondents understandings of the definitions. The characters prompted by the definitions varied widely, and the four characters most frequently suggested for each definition held two in common. Of twenty-two MEFI items (there are 60), only four were identified (by a slim majority) to be connected to forgiveness. A majority agreed with one of Enrights major assumptions, but a majority disagreed with another. <p> Responses to Enrights definition in general and to the MEFI items in particular show that the respondents understandings of forgiveness vary widely from Enrights and that they do not consider the MEFI to be closely related to forgiveness. Those who use the MEFI are in danger of proving true the Chinese proverb, Two-thirds of what a person sees exists behind that persons eyes.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:SSU.etd-04062005-103902 |
| Date | 06 April 2005 |
| Creators | Hanson, Todd |
| Contributors | Cochrane, Donald B. |
| Publisher | University of Saskatchewan |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://library.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-04062005-103902/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Saskatchewan or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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