GRATITUDE - Measuring Gratitude

In this post, I refer to a set of items to assess gratitude. The Gratitude Questionnaire uses six items and was published by McCullough, Emmons, and Tsang in 2002.

I have written elsewhere about gratitude. People high in the virtue of gratitude are often high in other virtues as well such as optimism and life satisfaction. They also tend to be more religious. In a previous post, The Psychology of Gratitude, I list some suggestions to increase gratitude.


Reliability
In previous research, the authors found support for one factor. Coefficient alpha, a measure of interitem consistency, ranged from .76 to .84 in samples reported by the authors  (McCullough, Emmons, & Tsang, 2002; McCullough, Tsang, & Emmons, 2002).


Rating the Scale Items

When using the scale in surveys the items are rated on a 7-point scale from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (7). High scores indicate a higher level of self-reported gratitude.

Here's the 7-point rating: 1 = strongly disagree 2 = disagree 3 = slightly disagree 4 = neutral 5 = slightly agree 6 = agree 7 = strongly agree

Here are the six-items from the scale:

____1. I have so much in life to be thankful for.

____2. If I had to list everything that I felt grateful for, it would be a very long list.

____3. When I look at the world, I don’t see much to be grateful for.*

____4. I am grateful to a wide variety of people.

____5. As I get older I find myself more able to appreciate the people, events, and situations that have been part of my life history.

____6. Long amounts of time can go by before I feel grateful to something or someone.*

*The items marked with an asterisk are reverse scored so a score of 7 counts as 1 and a score of 6 become 2 and so on.

The total score should be between 6 and 42.

A score of 38 was at the 50th percentile in a sample of 1,224. See the link for more information.

And, here is a link to research studies using the scale (Gratitude Questionnaire). You will find information on scoring and interpreting the scores.

The scale has been used in research studies along with other scales.

It may also be relevant in some counseling situations.

Availability and Use

At the time of this post, a free download was available from Penn Arts & Sciences

Related Posts

Gratitude Resentment and Appreciation Test - Short Form [GRAT-S]

Learn more assessment and statistical concepts in

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Add the Gratitude items to a survey- Learn more about Creating Surveys

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Read more about Gratitude in Chapter 4 of  Living Well

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Resource Link for more tests and questionnaires :  A – Z Test Index

Gratitude References

Cite this post

Sutton, G. W. (2022, November 3). Gratitude: Measuring gratitude. Assessment, Statistics, and Research. Retrieved from https://statistics.suttong.com/2017/11/measuring-gratitude.html 

*****

McCullough, M. E., Emmons, R. A., & Tsang, J. (2002). The grateful disposition: A conceptual and empirical topography. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 112-127.

McCullough, M. E., Tsang, J., & Emmons, R. A. (2004). Gratitude in intermediate affective terrain: Links of grateful moods to individual differences and daily emotional experience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86, 295-309.

Also, learn more about assessment and statistics at the Applied Statistics website

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Post tags

#gratitude  #positivepsychology  #measuringvirtues

Post updated 4 Nov 2022

HOPE - How to measure hope

The Adult Hope Scale developed by C. R. Snyder of the University of Kansas is an easy to use measure of hope. The original scale has 12-items, which measure two dimensions of hope based on hope theory. Four measure agency and four measure pathways--the other four are distractors.


The agency concept measures the capacity to focus energy on a goal. The pathways concept assesses plans to achieve goals. In recent studies, the four distraction items are often dropped leaving 8-items. Researchers often use the total score for the 8-items as a measure of trait (aka dispositional) hope.

Find Snyder's The Psychology of Hope

I have also included a Spanish language measure of hope in this post.

Here's the text we (Sutton et al., 2018) used to refer to the scale along with our findings.

The items used a response format of 1 = definitely false to 8 = definitely true. A sample item is, “I meet the goals I set for myself.” Snyder et al. (1991) reported alphas between .79 and .95 in four samples. 

In our two studies, the alpha reliability values were .82 and  .95.

As you might expect, hope is positively correlated with well-being, which provides some evidence supporting validity. Hope was significantly correlated with the Schwartz Outcome Scale in both studies (.64, .76) and with the Theistic Spiritual Outcome Scale in study 2 (.72).

Using the Hope Scale

Counselors and psychotherapists may consider the scale in assessment of clients because it strongly predicts satisfaction with therapy and patient well-being, which are used as outcome measures as noted above (See Sutton et al., 2018)

Researchers may want to use hope in a variety of surveys looking at characteristics of populations. The reliability values of the items vary with the study yet indicate an overall consistency in many contexts.

The 8-item Scale

LINK TO COPY OF THE ADULT HOPE SCALE (also called The Trait Hope Scale)


Learn more about Hope Theory

Learn more about adding scales like Hope when Creating Surveys

Available from AMAZON

Applied Statistics: Concepts for Counselors

Available from AMAZON

Resource Link:  A – Z Test Index

La Esperanza

A Spanish hope scale (Escala de Esperanza) is also available. An article suggests adequate psychometric properties for a 28-item version (Uribe, Bardales, & Herth, 2012).

Read more about hope in Chapter 5 of Living Well

References

Snyder, C. R., Harris, C., Anderson, J. R., Holleran, S. A., Irving, L. M., Sigmon, S. T., Yoshinoba, L., Gibb, J., Langelle, C., & Harney, P. (1991). The will and the ways: Development and validation of an individual-differences measure of hope. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60, 570-585. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.60.4.570

Snyder, C. R., Parenteau, S. C., Shorey, H. S., Kahle, K. E., & Berg, C. (2002). Hope as the underlying process in the psychotherapeutic change process. International Gestalt Journal, 25,11-29.

Sutton, G. W., Jordan, K., & Worthington, E.L., Jr. (2014). Spirituality, hope, compassion, and forgiveness: Contributions of Pentecostal spirituality to godly love. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 33, 212-226. 

Sutton, G. W., Kelly, H., Worthington, E. L. Jr., Griffin, B. J., & Dinwiddie, C. (2018) Satisfaction with Christian psychotherapy and well-being: Contributions of hope, personality, and spirituality. Spirituality in Clinical Practice, 5 (1), 8-24. doi: 10.1037/scp0000145 Academia Link    ResearchGate Link

Uribe, P. M., Bardales, M.C., & Herth, K. (2012). Propiedades psicométricas de la Escala de Esperanza de Herth en español. RIDEP, 33, 127-145. (aidep.org)

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Reporting Mean or Median

Who would think that a simple statistic like a mean or a median would make a difference?

In large samples involving thousands of people, and when data are normally distributed (close to the shape of a bell curve), the mean and median will be nearly the same. In fact, in a theoretical distribution called the normal curve, the mean, median, and  mode are in the middle.

But, many samples are not normal distributions. Instead, the often contain extreme scores called outliers or a lot of scores bunched up at high or low levels (skewed). Sadly, even people that understand statistics, continue to report the mean as if they are not thinking about their samples.

Suppose you work for a company where the top person earns $300,000 but most folks earn $30,000 to $60,000. Well that $300,000 is gonna skew results and the mean will look much higher than the median.

I ran some fictitious data on a sample of 10 people. Nine earn between $30 and $60K and one earns $300K. The Mean = $67K (standard deviation = 82.58), but the Median is only $38.5K and the Range = $270K.

Now those results are fictitious and it is a small sample so it magnifies the differences. But you know some folks are earning over $1,000,000.00 in some companies and lots of folks aren't earning anywhere near that amount.

So who cares? Well salaries make a lot of difference if you are arguing for a raise, considering a change of jobs, voting on budgets in not-for-profit organizations, and more. How motivating is it to give a donation to a company that helps the poor where the CEO pulls down nearly a million bucks a year and you get by on $65K-- or less?

But there's more. Teacher evaluations are usually skewed -- most students give high ratings-- so the median and range are more appropriate than the mean.

[ Read more about statistics in
Creating Surveys on AMAZON]

Real estate prices can be out-of-whack if you look at the mean price in a city where a few multimillion dollar homes pull the mean to a high level compared to the median price.

I see research papers where the scientists report the average age of people in surveys is 19 and they tell you thir sample was from a university. No problem with age 19 but when they report a Mean of 19 and a standard deviation of 5, there is a problem! If you understand standard deviations, you will know why they probably did not have a lot of 14-year olds in their university!

You can see that knowledgeable folks can play games with a simple statistic.

If you forgot about the meaning of some terms, here's a link to a free glossary.


A simple example

Counselors, teachers, and parents - think about test scores and how they are reported.  Test scores for students at school may be distorted by a few very high scoring or very low scoring students.

"Averages" can be deceiving.

Read more about basic statistics in APPLIED STATISTICS: CONCEPTS FOR COUNSELORS at

AMAZON

Connections

My Page    www.suttong.com

My Books   AMAZON     GOOGLE PLAY STORE

FACEBOOK   Geoff W. Sutton

TWITTER  @Geoff.W.Sutton

LinkedIN Geoffrey Sutton  PhD

Publications (many free downloads)

     

  Academia   Geoff W Sutton   (PhD)

     

  ResearchGate   Geoffrey W Sutton   (PhD)