Assessment, Statistics, and Research

Scale name: Transgression-Related Interpersonal Motivations (TRIM) Scale overview A 12-item self-report assessment of interpersonal motivations related to forgiveness. This version has two subscales. The Avoidance subscale has 7 items and the Revenge subscale has 5 items. There is a related 7-item benevolence subscale measuring benevolent motivations to forgive. Authors: McCullough et al., 1998 Response Type All items are rated on a 5-point Likert-type rating. Subscales Avoidance, Revenge, plus Benevolence Sample items Avoidance: “I live as if he/she doesn’t exist, isn’t around,” Revenge: “I’ll make him/her pay,” Benevolence: “Even though his/her actions hurt me, I still have goodwill for him/ her” Reliability See McCullough et al. (1998) for details on the psychometric properties of the TRIM-12. Validity See McCullough et al. (1998) for details on the psychometric properties of the TRIM-12. Availability See the article in the APA PsycArticles Database or...

  Scale name: Clergy Situational Restoration Inventory (CSRI) Scale overview The Clergy Situational Restoration Inventory evaluates participants’ attitudes toward restoration based on participant responses to 10 transgression scenarios in which a pastor violated a common sociomoral expectation (Sutton et al. 2007; Sutton & Thomas 2004). The scale uses descriptive Likert-type ratings that range from one (no restoration to ministry) to seven (full restoration to the position previously held). The transgression scenarios include problems of substance abuse, infidelity, and embezzlement. Because of the range of common yet hypothetical scenarios, the developers expected the CSRI to assess a disposition to restore. Author(s) Sutton and Jordan (2013) with previous versions used in Sutton et al. (2007), Sutton & Thomas (2004, 2005). Items  10- items, which are short scenarios Response Type A 7-point rating scale with anchors 1 = No Restoration and 7 = Full rest...

Following a painful experience like those reported by women in the “me too” movement, many may work to forgive their offender to free themselves from the ongoing internal struggle caused by rehearsing the event and nursing anger. Forgiveness, of course, should not be construed as excusing, pardoning, or tolerating abuse. Neither should survivors' forgiveness of their offenders reduce the responsibility of government and business leaders to act justly and provide safeguards against future offenses. When people begin to work on forgiveness toward offenders for particularly horrific offenses like rape and murder, they may find strong emotions like anger and the desire for revenge make it seem impossible to overcome. Ev Worthington (Virginia Commonwealth University) and his colleagues have published two measures of forgiveness that divide forgiveness into two parts: Emotional and Decisional. This makes sense to me as a clinician, a scientist, and a person who, like many,...

Scale Name: Trait Forgiveness Scale (TFS) There are several questionnaires that can help individuals, clinicians, and researchers discover levels of forgiveness. As you might suspect, the different measures reflect different ideas about forgiveness. In this post I will look at trait forgiveness rather than state forgiveness. I am using trait in a psychological sense to mean a disposition or tendency—a behavior pattern that we might consider a part of someone’s personality. Psychological scientists sometimes refer to trait forgiveness as dispositional forgiveness or  forgivingness . Trait forgiveness stands in contrast to a particular state of forgiveness. For example, a person may think about a specific offender and a specific event and respond to questions on a “state” scale to indicate their current progress in forgiving the offender. We should also keep in mind that most older forgiveness scales focused on victims forgiving another person rather than forgi...