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. 2022 Jul;29(4):1463-1474.
doi: 10.1002/cpp.2714. Epub 2022 Feb 5.

'I have high self-compassion': A face-valid single-item self-compassion scale for resource-limited research contexts

Jia Wei Zhang  1 , Ryan T Howell  2 , Serena Chen  3 , Aleah Ruth Goold  1 , Begüm Bilgin  4 , Wen Jia Chai  5 , Tamilselvan Ramis  6   7
Affiliations

'I have high self-compassion': A face-valid single-item self-compassion scale for resource-limited research contexts

Jia Wei Zhang et al. Clin Psychol Psychother. 2022 Jul.

Abstract

The original 26-item Self-Compassion Scale (SCS; Neff, 2003) and 12-item Short-Form Self-Compassion Scale (SF-SCS; Raes et al., 2011) are scales commonly used in cross-sectional and longitudinal research to assess the global self-compassion construct and its six facets. We introduce the Single-Item Self-Compassion Scale (SISC; 'I have high self-compassion') to measure the global self-compassion construct in time-, space- and resource-limited contexts (e.g., daily diaries, experience sampling and nationally representative surveys). Additionally, the SISC will expand knowledge about self-compassion by providing researchers whose primary interest is not self-compassion with a convenient, face-valid option to measure self-compassion. Across 10 samples (four cross-sectional, four longitudinal and two 7-day daily diary; N = 2,477), we demonstrated that the SISC has acceptable psychometric properties. Specifically, the SISC was temporally consistent, correlated adequately with the SCS and SF-SCS, exhibited nearly identical correlational patterns when compared with the SCS and SF-SCS with a wide range of criterion measures (e.g., self-esteem, personality, affective and social functioning, mental health and demographic variables) and saved 12 min over a 7-day diary. Results replicated among students, community samples and across the United States, Turkey and Malaysia. Thus, we provide the field with an alternative measure of the global self-compassion construct that complements the SCS and SF-SCS.

Keywords: global self-compassion; reliability; single item; test construction; validity.

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