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Assessing Forgiveness: Development of a Brief, Broadly Applicable Self-report Measure

Forgiveness is a construct that has captured the interest of researchers and practitioners across various fields, from philosophy to biology; however, defining and measuring forgiveness has been a challenge because of its complex nature. By drawing on relationships discovered in past studies, reviewing definitions across disciplines, and noting weaknesses in current forgiveness measures, the task of developing a broadly applicable forgiveness measure with strong theoretical and psychometric roots resulted in the creation of the General Measure of Forgiveness (GMF).

The GMF is a brief, Likert response questionnaire that is appropriate for both relationship and non-relationship transgressions; heretofore, there has not been an established measure for non-relationship trangressions. This study was an initial investigation into the psychometric properties of the GMF. In an online design, college participants (n=343) were administered the GMF along with an established interpersonal measure of forgiveness, the Enright Forgiveness Inventory (EFI: Enright & Rique, 2004), and other measures of theoretically related and unrelated constructs. For the forgiveness measures, participants completed the GMF and EFI (order counterbalanced) in response to the same self-generated relationship transgression, then completed the GMF in response to a self-generated non-relationship transgression.

Results supported the internal consistency of the GMF (Cronbach's alphas of .93 for both relationship and non-relationship forgiveness) and an exploratory factor analysis identified a primary factor accounting for about 30% of the total item variance. Convergent and discriminant validity analyses resulted in largely predicted relationships (e.g., r = .81 for GMFrelationship and EFI; r = .78 for GMFnon-relationship and a single-item assessment of forgiveness; r = -.26 for GMFrelationship and anger and aggression).

These results are encouraging as use of the GMF could open new areas of research in non-relationship forgiveness and enhance research and application of relationship forgiveness. Specifically, the GMF holds promise for improving research by providing a brief, non-proprietary, and broadly applicable measure of forgiveness. Broadly, the study suggests that a general measure of forgiveness is feasible. / Master of Science

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/42653
Date11 June 2009
CreatorsLaw, Mary Kate
ContributorsPsychology, Axsom, Danny K., Clum, George A. Jr., Dunsmore, Julie C.
PublisherVirginia Tech
Source SetsVirginia Tech Theses and Dissertation
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
Formatapplication/pdf, application/pdf
RightsIn Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
RelationThesis_Complete_1_2[1].pdf, approval_letter[1].pdf

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