Assessment, Statistics, and Research

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)”      Read more about the psychology of courage. 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 c...