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| Lions of Kruger/ Geoff Sutton 2009 |
Courage
is a virtue.
Despite
being an ancient virtue, courage is a relatively new topic of study in
psychological science. As with any psychological concept, definitions can vary.
Woodward and his colleagues have begun a line of inquiry, which includes a
measurement scale.
Here’s
a 2007 definition:
“Courage is the voluntary willingness to act, with or without varying levels of fear, in response to a threat to achieve an important, perhaps moral, outcome or goal. (p. 136)”
Factor
analysis suggested participants identified three types of threats: Physical,
social, and emotional. When scale items were analyzed, four factors emerged,
which were categorized by the authors as follows:
1.
work/employment courage
2.
patriotic/religion/belief-based courage
3. social-moral
courage
4.
independent or family-based courage
23-item Measure
A
popular measure of courage is the Woodard Pury Courage Scale, which
consists of 23-items (2007).
Each
item describes a situation. Participants read each item and provide two
responses. First, they provide a rating of agreement from 1 = Strongly Disagree
to 5 = Strongly Agree. Second, they rate how fearful they would be in a
situation from 1 = Little Fear to 5 = Very High Fear.
Items
deal with various life situations such as highly challenging work situations
and intervening in a dangerous interpersonal situation.
Educators, researchers, and students may want to add a courage scale to their survey projects.
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Conditions of Use
The
scale may be used in non-commercial research and educational survey projects. Contact
the author for commercial use. The full scale is protected by copyright and not
for public posting.
Locating the full set of scale
items
Find
the scale in the article—see the reference at the end of this post. The
23-items are listed in the Appendix to the article (page 147). It is also
available for download in PsycTESTS ®
Read more about Courage in chapter 2 of Living Well
Resource Link: A – Z Test Index
Reference
Woodard, Cooper R., &
Pury, Cynthia L. S. (2007). The construct of courage: Categorization and
measurement. Consulting Psychology
Journal: Practice and Research, 59(2), 135-147. doi:
10.1037/1065-9293.59.2.135
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