‘I have high self-compassion’: A face-valid single-item self-compassion scale for resource-limited research contexts
Abstract
The original 26-item Self-Compassion Scale (SCS; Neff, 2003) and 12-item Short-Form Self-Compassion Scale (SF-SCS; Raes et al., 2011) are scales commonly used in cross-sectional and longitudinal research to assess the global self-compassion construct and its six facets. We introduce the Single-Item Self-Compassion Scale (SISC; ‘I have high self-compassion’) to measure the global self-compassion construct in time-, space- and resource-limited contexts (e.g., daily diaries, experience sampling and nationally representative surveys). Additionally, the SISC will expand knowledge about self-compassion by providing researchers whose primary interest is not self-compassion with a convenient, face-valid option to measure self-compassion. Across 10 samples (four cross-sectional, four longitudinal and two 7-day daily diary; N = 2,477), we demonstrated that the SISC has acceptable psychometric properties. Specifically, the SISC was temporally consistent, correlated adequately with the SCS and SF-SCS, exhibited nearly identical correlational patterns when compared with the SCS and SF-SCS with a wide range of criterion measures (e.g., self-esteem, personality, affective and social functioning, mental health and demographic variables) and saved 12 min over a 7-day diary. Results replicated among students, community samples and across the United States, Turkey and Malaysia. Thus, we provide the field with an alternative measure of the global self-compassion construct that complements the SCS and SF-SCS.
Publication Title
Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy
Recommended Citation
Zhang, J., Howell, R., Chen, S., Goold, A., Bilgin, B., Chai, W., & Ramis, T. (2022). ‘I have high self-compassion’: A face-valid single-item self-compassion scale for resource-limited research contexts. Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy https://doi.org/10.1002/cpp.2714
