ASSeSSmeNt Of RelIAbIlIty AND vAlIDIty Of the tuRkISh veRSION Of ...

Psychological Reports: Measures & Statistics 2012, 111, 2, 575-584. © Psychological Reports 2012

ASSeSSmeNt Of RelIAbIlIty AND vAlIDIty Of the tuRkISh veRSION Of heARtlAND fORgIveNeSS ScAle1 ASlI bugAy

AyhAN DemIR

TED University, Turkey

Middle East Technical University, Turkey RAquel DelevI

California State University, Los Angeles Summary.—the current study investigated the reliability and validity of the turkish version of the heartland forgiveness Scale (hfS). the turkish version of the hfS, the Ruminative Response Scale (RRS), and the Satisfaction with life Scale (SWlS) were administered to 796 turkish university students (430 women, 366 men) with a mean age of 20.6 yr. (SD = 2.1). Internal consistency reliability was calculated and Cronbach alpha coeicients ranged between .71 and .82. Criterion validity (Pearson correlation) between the HFS and other scales ranged from −.09 to .34. Additionally, a conirmatory factor analysis was conducted to assess the it of the standard three-factor solution of the hfS. the results suggested that the turkish version of the hfS had adequate internal consistency, criterion validity, and relected the standard three-factor structure, indicating that it can be reliably used to measure forgiveness among a turkish sample.

Interest in the concept of forgiveness has grown dramatically in the last few decades. Numerous studies have found forgiveness to be associated with a variety of psychological and mental health indicators including anger (Freedman & Enright, 1996; Thompson, Snyder, Hofman, Michael, Rasmussen, & billings, 2005), shame, guilt, perfectionism (mccann, 2009), rumination (ysseldyk, matheson, & Anisman, 2007), depression and anxiety (maltby, macaskill, & Day, 2001). forgiveness is a multi-faceted concept, which has been examined mainly as dispositional or state forgiveness. Dispositional forgiveness refers to trait-like qualities that remain stable both across time and contexts (Worthington, 2005). On the other hand, state forgiveness refers to forgiving a speciic hurtful event and can luctuate depending on the situation and other factors such as timing, the type of transgression, etc. based on this distinction, several instruments have been developed to measure dispositional forgiveness, e.g., the forgiveness of Self and forgiveness of Others Scale (mauger, Perry, freeman, grove, mcbride, & mckinney, 1992), and state forgiveness, e.g., the transgression-Related Interpersonal motivations Scale (mccullough, Rachal, Sandage, Worthington, Jr., Brown, & Hight, 1998). There is a tendency in the literature to measure Address correspondence to Aslı Bugay, TED University, Faculty of Education, Department of educational Sciences, Ankara 06420, turkey or e-mail ([email protected]).

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DOI 10.2466/08.21.PR0.111.5.575-584

ISSN 0033-2941

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speciic forms of forgiveness rather than forgiveness as a global concept. forgiveness can also be examined based on who is being forgiven: others versus self (enright & the human Development Study group, 1996). forgiveness of others focuses on the response to being hurt, when a person has to forgive someone else. On the other hand, forgiveness of self focuses on the feelings that emerge as a result of hurting others or self. In other words, in forgiveness of others, the person has negative reactions towards others and tries to forgive them; however, self-forgiveness involves negative reactions (i.e., anger, blame, and hatred) toward oneself. the majority of forgiveness measures in the literature have focused on assessing forgiveness of others (e.g., enright forgiveness Inventory, forgiveness likelihood Scale). Only two forgiveness scales have measured forgiveness of self and others including the forgiveness of Self and forgiveness of Others Scale (mauger, et al., 1992) and the multidimensional forgiveness Inventory (tangney, fee, Reinsmith, boone, & lee, 1999). A less studied aspect of forgiveness is forgiveness of situations beyond one’s control (i.e., illness, natural disaster, etc.) Recently, the heartland forgiveness Scale (hfS; thompson, et al., 2005) was developed to assess the forgiveness in a multidimensional manner, which is the main focus of the current study. this scale is unique in the sense that it is the irst to measure dispositional forgiveness of self, others, and situations simultaneously. It consists of three subscales, each containing six items. the forgiveness of Self subscale includes items on negative attitudes such as shame, guilt, and sin toward self. forgiveness of Others subscale includes items on negative attitudes such as revenge, frustration, and grudges toward a transgressor. the forgiveness of Situations subscale includes items related to blaming or accepting uncontrollable circumstances and negative events (e.g., an illness or natural disaster). thompson, et al. (2005) found that the scale had adequate psychometric properties with six diferent samples of college students at a large, public, midwestern u.S. university. Investigation of the relations among the dimensions of forgiveness and other measures provided evidence for criterion validity of hfS. In particular, thompson, et al. (2005) found forgiveness to be negatively correlated to rumination, vengeance, and hostility but positively correlated to cognitive lexibility, positive afect, and distraction. Originally, the hfS has been used in english-speaking countries (e.g., Day & maltby, 2005; fisher & exline, 2006), but also has been translated into Japanese (Osanai & furukawa, 2005) and taiwanese (lee & Chen, 2009). Yet, there is insuicient knowledge regarding the factor structure and cross-cultural validity of this scale due to its recent introduction into the ield. very little is known about forgiveness and its relations to psychologi-

heARtlAND fORgIveNeSS ScAle

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cal factors in turkey given the absence of a standardized turkish version of a forgiveness measure. A single-item measure of forgiveness (i.e., “I forgive him/her for what he/she did to me”) was utilized in a few turkish studies (taysin, 2007; Alpay, 2009). these studies mainly focused on forgiveness of others in marriage. More speciically, Alpay (2009) examined the predictive role of attachment, self-esteem, romantic jealousy, empathy, and perception of the injured on forgiveness in 200 married couples (104 men, 96 women). Participants were asked if they would forgive their partners in case of a transgression. the results indicated that empathy, perception of the transgression, and self-esteem signiicantly predicted forgiveness. In addition, taysin (2007) found that marital adjustment, the severity of transgression, and most importantly, responsibility attributions of the transgressed partner were signiicantly predictive of forgiveness of a partner. these studies focused on forgiveness of “other” and suggested that perception of the transgression and the responsibility attributions are important components of the forgiveness of a partner. Adapting a scale for the turkish language and culture could facilitate the development of forgiveness literature. given that the hfS is a fairly recent scale assessing the three dimensions of forgiveness, it was decided to examine its psychometric properties to assess its cross-cultural reliability and validity. thus, the current study examined the factor structure, internal consistency reliability, and criterion validity of the turkish version of heartland forgiveness Scale. Method Participants the sample consisted of 796 students (430 women, 366 men) at a public university in turkey. their mean age was 20.6 yr. (SD = 2.1). Participants were 265 freshmen, 289 sophomores, 93 juniors, and 149 seniors. before administering the instruments, necessary permissions were obtained from the university human Subjects committee. Participation in the study was voluntary and participants were guaranteed anonymity of their responses and conidentiality of the data. The completion of the survey took approximately 10–15 minutes. Instruments The Heartland Forgiveness Scale (HFS).—this scale developed by thompson, et al. (2005) is a self-report measure of dispositional forgiveness with 18 items. The scale consists of three subscales, each with six items: forgiveness of self (e.g., “Although I feel bad at irst when I mess up, over time I can give myself some slack”), forgiveness of others (e.g., “I continue to punish a person who has done something that I think is wrong”), and forgiveness of situations (e.g., “When things go wrong for

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reasons that can’t be controlled, I get stuck in negative thoughts about it”). In this measure, participants are asked to respond in such a way that it relects how they would typically respond to transgressions by using a 7-point rating scale, with anchors 1: Almost always more false than true and 7: Almost always true of me. Higher scores on each subscale relect higher forgiveness in each domain. the total score is the sum of item ratings after Items 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, and 17 are reverse scored. In assessing the psychometric characteristics, thompson, et al. (2005) reported internal consistency coeicients as .75 for Forgiveness of Self, .79 for Forgiveness of Others, .79 for Forgiveness of Situation and .87 for Total scores; test-retest reliabilities were .72, .73, .77, and .83, respectively, with a three-week test-retest interval. In addition, they found that the hfS was signiicantly correlated with Mauger, et al.’s (1992) forgiveness of Self and forgiveness of Others Scales with correlations ranging from r = .23 to r = .61, and the multidimensional forgiveness Inventory with correlations ranging from r = .24 to r = .47. the translation of the turkish version of the hfS was conducted by bugay and Demir (2010). they reported acceptable internal consistency coeicients and convergent validity for the Turkish version of the HFS with 376 university students (196 women, 180 men). In the current study, the turkish language version of the hfS was administered to assess the scale’s factor structure, validity, and reliability. Establishing Criterion Validity In order to test the criterion validity of the turkish version of the hfS, it was decided to use the short version of Ruminative Response Scale and the Satisfaction with life Scale as suggested by thompson, et al. (2005). It was expected that the hfS would have a positive correlation with a measure of positive afect such, as life satisfaction, because forgiveness involves the transformation of negative feelings into neutral or positive thoughts and feelings. In addition, the hfS was expected to correlate negatively with measures of rumination because rumination has been found to be positively related to depression (berry, Worthington, Jr., Parrott, O’connor, & Wade, 2001). The short version of the Ruminative Response Scale (RRS).—this measure had 10 items with a 4-point likert-type scale with anchors 1: Almost never and 4: Almost always. the scale has been found to have adequate reliability and validity for use in research and clinical practice (treynor, gonzalez, & Nolen-hoeksema, 2003). the basic psychometric properties of the turkish version of the survey were examined by erdur-baker and bugay (2012) with a sample of 387 (274 women, 113 men) Turkish undergraduate students. the results of validity and reliability analyses indicated that the short version of the RRS can be used to measure ruminative response

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styles among turkish youth. In the current study, the internal reliability coeicient for this measure was found to be .79. The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS).—this scale was developed by Diener, Emmons, Larsen, and Griin (1985) to measure global life satisfaction with ive items on a 7-point Likert-type scale with anchors 1: Strongly disagree and 7: Strongly agree. higher scores indicate higher life satisfaction. The two-month test-retest correlation coeicient was found to be .82, and Cronbach’s alpha coeicient was .87 (Diener, et al., 1985). The scale was adapted into turkish by köker (1991). the psychometric properties of the scale were investigated by Durak, Senol-Durak, and gençoz, (2010) where they found the reliability and validity to be satisfactory with three independent turkish samples. therefore, their results indicated that the turkish version of the scale is valid and reliable for use with turkish samples. In the current study, the internal reliability coeicient was .84. Results Descriptive statistics for all measures are presented in table 1. Construct Validity AMOS Version 16.0 (Arbuckle, 2007) was used to perform conirmatory factor analysis (cfA). maximum likelihood and covariance matrices were used to test the three-factor model of the turkish hfS. In order to evaluate the results of the structural model, use of multiple indices was recommended since a single index shows only one aspect of model it (Klem, 2000; Thompson, 2000; Kline, 2005). Therefore, the model it of the current models was evaluated using a number of it indices: the goodnessof-it index (GFI, value above .90), the comparative it index (CFI > .80), the root mean square error of approximation (RmSeA < .10), and the Standardized root mean square residual (SRmR < .10) are suggested as criteria for acceptable it (Browne & Cudeck, 1993; Schumacker & Lomax, 1996). A common guideline for interpreting RmSeA and SRmR is that a value of .05 or less indicates close it, a value of .08 or less indicates reasonable it and a value of .10 or greater indicates poor it (Bentler, 1990; Kline, 2005). tAble 1 descRiptive statistics foR study MeasuRes measure

α

Split-half

M

SD

min.

max.

heartland forgiveness Scale total forgiveness of Self forgiveness of Others forgiveness of Situation Rumination Response Scale Satisfaction With life Scale

.80 .71 .82 .79 .79 .84

.78 .70 .79 .78 .78 .83

80.73 27.17 25.92 27.56 21.71 21.76

14.24 5.42 7.36 6.66 5.08 6.46

35 8 6 6 10 5

125 41 42 42 40 35

Note.—α = cronbach’s α internal consistency reliability; Split-half is the split-half reliability.

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A. bugAy, ET AL. tAble 2 coRRelations aMong heaRtland foRgiveness scale, RuMination Response scale and satisfaction With life scale (N = 796)

heartland forgiveness Scale forgiveness of self forgiveness of others forgiveness of situation hfS total

Rumination Response Scale

Satisfaction With life Scale

−.32† −.09* −.34† −.31†

.26† .10* .34† .31†

Note.—forgiveness of Self = forgiveness of Self Subscale of hfS; forgiveness of others = forgiveness of Others Subscale of hfS; forgiveness of Situation = forgiveness of Situation Subscale of hfS; hfS total = total score of hfS; Rumination = Ruminative Response Scale; life Satisfaction = The Satisfaction with Life Scale. *p < .05. †p < .001.

The indings revealed good model it indices for the three-factor model of the hfS [χ² (N = 132) = 349.8, p < .0001; χ²/df = 2.65; GFI = .96, CFI = .97, RMSEA = .04, SRMR = .03]. The goodness-of-it indices suggested that the model it was adequate. Also, all factor loadings were statistically signiicant and ranged from .42 to .76. the results of the estimated correlation coeicients of each factor indicated that all three factors are positively correlated with each other (Self and Other, r = .33, Self and Situation r = .75, Other and Situation r = .50). It can be concluded that any change (increase or decrease) in one of the three forgiveness scores would result in a change in other forgiveness factors in the same direction. these results support the three-factor model of the hfS, providing evidence for the construct validity. Testing Criterion-related Validity Pearson correlation coeicients among the HFS, SWLS, and RRS were calculated to test the criterion-related validity of the HFS. Signiicant positive correlations were found between the hfS total and SWlS scores and between forgiveness of Situation and SWlS scores, and weaker ones between forgiveness of Self and SWlS and between forgiveness of Others and SWLS scores. There were signiicant negative correlations between the hfS and RRS scores, between forgiveness of Self and RRS scores, between the forgiveness of Situation subscale and RRS scores, and a weaker correlation between forgiveness of Others and RRS scores (table 2). Testing Reliability Internal consistency coeicients were calculated for the reliability of the turkish hfS and its subscales, as well as the RRS and SWlS, indicating adequate internal consistency (see table 2). discussion the current study investigated the psychometric properties of the Turkish version of Heartland Forgiveness Scale. Conirmatory factor anal-


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ysis was used to assess the construct validity of the scale. the three-factor model of the hfS suggested by thompson, et al. (2005) was tested and the results indicated that the model generally met criteria for goodness of it. therefore, the three-factor model was supported, as was the construct validity of the scale. furthermore, the results supported adequate criterion-related validity as reported in the original study (thompson, et al., 2005). Participants with a high hfS score tended to obtain higher scores on the SWlS, and participants with lower RRS scores were more likely to have high score on the hfS. that is, forgiveness was found to be associated with greater life satisfaction and lower rumination in the expected direction. furthermore, consistent with thompson, et al. (2005) and mauger, et al.’s (1992) indings, forgiveness of self and forgiveness of situations were found to be more robustly associated with life satisfaction and rumination than forgiveness of others. these results illuminate the two dimensions of forgiveness (forgiveness of self and situations) as important coping strategies that could be used in dealing with adverse life experiences. Although the forgiveness of self and situation were found to be important in several studies, there is still a need in the literature to better understand the diferent aspects of these two types of forgiveness. given that forgiveness is an understudied concept in turkey, the current study ofers a starting point for future research to be pursued in the area of forgiveness. Regarding the results, some implications and recommendations for future research are possible. first, this study makes valuable contributions to the ield by translating and testing its basic psychometric properties in the turkish culture and language to measure individuals’ trait forgiveness. however, researchers also require a reliable and valid ofense-speciic forgiveness measure in addition to trait forgiveness measures. therefore, future research could adapt and/or develop offense-speciic forgiveness instruments in the Turkish culture. moreover, forgiveness scales focusing on relationship issues could be developed and/or adapted into turkish culture to understand the role of forgiveness in family relations that can have broader implications for the ield of marriage and family therapy. Future studies should also examine the convergent validity of the scale by testing its correlation with other measures of forgiveness. the hfS is a relatively new scale to measure forgiveness as a trait and the cultural validation of the scale in diferent contexts has not yet been established. thus, further empirical evidence by means of multiple-group conirmatory factor analyses is needed to test its cross-cultural validity. finally, forgiveness is a construct that is closely related to religion and spirituality (gorsuch & hao, 1993; edwards, lapp-Rincker, magyar-moe, Rehfeldt, Ryder, brown, et al., 2002). Nearly all turkish citizens are mus-

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lim, and Islam often emphasizes the importance of forgiveness, not seeing others’ laws, or focusing on one’s own laws before criticizing others. this brings up the question of the importance of addressing religiosity in assessing the concept of forgiveness. future studies could examine ways to incorporate the two concepts and see if the link is meaningful to examine further. In addition, some limitations need to be mentioned. first, a convenience sample of students from a public turkish university was used, which limits the generalizability of the indings. Thus, future research should focus on more diverse populations with diferent age groups, which could improve the understanding of forgiveness at diferent developmental stages. Additional research should also examine the scale’s psychometric properties in a community sample. furthermore, due to the limitations of the cross-sectional nature of this study, longitudinal studies are needed to test the stability of the results over time. RefeReNceS

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tReynoR, W., gonzalez, R., & nolen-hoekseMa, s. (2003) Rumination reconsidered: a psychometric analysis. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 27, 247-259. WoRthington, e. l., JR. (ed.) (2005) Handbook of forgiveness. New york: brunner-Routledge. ysseldyk, R., Matheson, k., & anisMan, h. (2007) Rumination: bridging a gap between forgivingness, vengefulness, and psychological health. Personality and Individual Diferences, 42, 1573-1584. Accepted August 30, 2012.