Setting the Record Straight About the Self-Compassion Scale
This is a reply in the continuing argument about how the Self-Compassion Scale should be scored. The criticism it answers holds that the scale contains two different things, items describing self-compassion and items describing its opposite, and that combining them into one total obscures which of the two is doing the work in any result. The position defended here is that the scale measures a single construct with six facets, that compassionate and uncompassionate responding sit on one dimension rather than being separate variables, and that the factor-analytic evidence across many samples supports reporting either six subscale scores or one total. Both sides are on this site, and this vault's own practice is to report the components separately, on the grounds that a measure that cannot distinguish two opposite mechanisms cannot test either. Written without an abstract, from the title and from the published papers on both sides.
This is a reply in the continuing argument about how the Self-Compassion Scale should be scored. The criticism it answers holds that the scale contains two different things, items describing self-compassion and items describing its opposite, and that combining them into one total obscures which of the two is doing the work in any result. The position defended here is that the scale measures a single construct with six facets, that compassionate and uncompassionate responding sit on one dimension rather than being separate variables, and that the factor-analytic evidence across many samples supports reporting either six subscale scores or one total. Both sides are on this site, and this vault's own practice is to report the components separately, on the grounds that a measure that cannot distinguish two opposite mechanisms cannot test either. Written without an abstract, from the title and from the published papers on both sides.
Written from the the paper's title and the two published sides of this dispute, both cited here.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Neff, K. D. (2019). "Setting the Record Straight About the Self-Compassion Scale." Mindfulness, 10, 200-202.
Where we use it
- Why You Are Kinder to Your Friends Than to Yourself, Why We Care
Reliability of this reference
The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-018-1061-6
DOI: 10.1007/s12671-018-1061-6