Assessment, Statistics, and Research

This creative time and data chart helps readers understand the details that explain why a broad concept does not always make sense. Official government reports tell us price inflation is low, but our experience tells us so many things cost so much more like health insurance and medical expenses. And compared to retired folks, working people earn so much more than retirees used to earn for the same job. (See  Marketwatch Story for the chart and related data) . I think this type of chart would be useful when dimensions of a metaconcept change over time. For example, the process from an offense to forgiveness has multiple dimensions of change like avoidance and thoughts of revenge. If multiple measures are taken at different time points, they may be plotted over months or years to demonstrate increases and decreases. In fact, the idea of the "cost" of forgiveness might be worthy of consideration. After all, the Christian concept of forgiveness is analogous

Scale Name: Group Forgiveness Scale (GFS) The Group Forgiveness Scale (GFS) was developed to measure forgiveness of identity-related offenses. Research supports three factors for the 17 items: Avoidance, Revenge, Decision to Forgive. In the article describing its development, the authors focused on problems of race relations in the United States (see Davis et al., 2015, below). The GFS is an adaptation of the Transgression-Related Interpersonal Motivations Scale (TRIM). According to the 2015 article by Don Davis and his research team, 17-items resulted in factor loadings on three distinct subscales: Avoidance, Revenge, and Decision to Forgive. Sample items for each factor are as follows: Avoidance             I am avoiding them. Revenge             I am going to get even. Decision to Forgive             I have decided to forgive them. Reliability Data Reliability values were strong as measured by Cronbach’s alpha (Study 3: Avoidance .96; Revenge .9

T he Religious and Spiritual Struggles Scale (RSS) assesses six domains of potential struggles, which people may experience. The RSS is a 26-item measure with strong psychometric support. For a list of the items and more details, see the reference below (Exline, Pargament, Grubbs, & Yali, 2014). Based on Exline et al. (2014) and a general reading of the topic, I define religious/ spiritual (RS) struggles as experiences of personal concern linked to RS beliefs, practices, values, or experiences, which negatively affect thinking, feelings, or behavior, relationships, or health. The Six Domains of Spiritual Struggles Following is a quote from page 208 of the 2014 article, which describes the six domains. I have added bold text to help readers identify each domain. Note, r/s is a common abbreviation for religious/spiritual. The measure assesses six domains of r/s struggle: divine (negative emotion centered on beliefs about God or a perceived relationship with God), demo