Introducing
Your new presentation assistant.
Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.
Trending searches
Kristin Neff's Self Compassion Scale
4
The Self Compassion Scale
Tiare Poleschook, Clayton Klima, & Ellen Tuohy
What is it?
Compassion: is a mental state that is focused on another person's suffering and includes a wish or aspiration to see that person relieved of suffering while also holding the spectrum of experiences.
Self-compassion: is the idea of encompassing our selves into our sphere of compassion
- 3 core elements
- mindfulness
- self-kindness
- common humanity
The Self Compassion Scale (SCS): is an assessment developed by Kristin Neff to measure how one typically treats themselves in difficult circumstances.
- long and short version; Likert-Scale
Overview
Why Does it Matter?
Individually and in the context of the therapeutic relationship the SCS:
- gives us a baseline knowledge to understand conceptually and quantitatively where we and our clients are located on the spectrum of self aggression to self compassion
- informs us on levels of emotional intelligence, kindness to oneself, mindfulness
- is the launch pad from where the work can start
Our level of self-compassion informs our level of compassion for others.
Why?
How is Self Compassion Different?
How?
Self-compassion is different from self-pity: Self-pity is filled with criticism, whereas self-compassion promotes: kindness, support and understanding.
Self-compassion is different from self-esteem:
Self-esteem is performance based, narcissistic and self-centered. Self compassion is experienced with positive emotions towards the self without bolstering one's self-concept.
(Neff, 2003).
Overlap with Mindfulness
- Mindfulness: focus on experience itself. "What am I experiencing right now?" Promotes awareness to feel your suffering.
- Self-compassion: focus more on caring for the experiencer. "What do I need right now?" Promotes kindness to self when you suffer.
(Neff, 2019)
Mindfulness
Test History
Test History
Theoretical Orientation:
- Kristin Neff became intrigued by the benefit of self-compassion which she was introduced to through her Buddhist meditation practice.
- She hypothesized there would be correlations between psychological and emotional well-being and self-compassion.
- She defined self-compassion, found a way to measure it quantitatively and compared against other constructs such as self-esteem.
Theoretical Constructs:
- Measuring self compassion: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness.
- Measuring uncompassionate: self-judgment, isolation, and over-identification.
(Neff, 2003)
Development of SCS
Development of SCS
1. Pilot study: Asking students open ended questions about each of the major constructs of self-compassion.
- Used to gauge what type of questions an average person would understand.
2. Study 1: Administration of 71 question determined by pilot study. Items were worded so that they represented each of the six constructs in roughly equal proportions.
3. Study 2: Comparing self-compassion to self-esteem. Measures of depression and anxiety also included to reconfirm the relationship between self-compassion and psychological well-being.
4. Study 3: Since SCS came from Buddhist concepts, this study used Buddhist practitioners as a comparison sample.
- Findings from this study suggest that meditation practice/Buddhist teachings might be useful for greater mental health.
(Neff, 2003)
Information on Norms:
Norms
- Initial studies were carried out with: 391 randomly selected undergraduate psychology students at a large southwestern University.
- Average age: 20.91 years
- Ethnic background: 58% White, 21% Asian, 11% Hispanic, 4% Black, and 6% Other.
- Many studies followed up in multiple countries. Some considered different cultural norms such as: individualism, masculinity, power distance, long-term orientation, uncertainty avoidance, and indulgence towards the constructs of self-compassion.
- The constructs used to measure self-compassion might differ across cultural backgrounds.
(Neff, 2003)
(Montero-Marin, et al., 2018)
Clinical Test Administration
- Multiple settings including: student, clinical, group and community.
- Time to take and score the scale is 5-10 minutes depending on long or short version.
- Adaptions: youth version, 10-14; translated into 18 different languages.
- Beneficial to individuals or groups.
- Scale can be taken on computer or written.
- Qualification level: A
Clinical Test Admin
How it's Scored
Scored: Self-report; Likert scale - 1: Almost never to
5: Almost always.
6 categories: self-kindness, self-judgment, common humanity, isolation, mindfulness, and over-identified items.
Calculate the average score in each category, reversing the scores for uncompassionate constructs.
Combine averages to equate your self-compassion score.
Scoring
Meaning of Scores
Average scores on SCS around 3.0. Score of 1-2.5 = low self-compassion; 2.5-3.5 = moderate self-compassion; 3.5-5.0 = high self-compassion.
Higher self-compassionate scores: directly linked to happiness and life satisfaction.
Higher uncompassionate scores: correlated with negative mind states such as, depression, stress and anxiety.
(Neff, 2003).
Meaning
Additional considerations
Special Considerations
- Self-compassion is a cross-cultural phenomena. However, while designing the SCS, the researchers used undergraduate students from a large southwestern American University. So, the design and first results were skewed to a specific population.
- There are no special accommodations for taking the SCS. There are no variations to scoring for different populations.
- The SCS is currently the only self-report instrument to measure self-compassion (Lopez, 2015).
Psychometric Characteristics
- Although initial studies were not very diverse, the SCS has been used for a multitude of tests since its creation which control for various influencing factors such as race, SES, and other multicultural aspects as well as being controlled against social desirability and self esteem (Neff, 2003)
- After 17 years of repeated studies in a multitude of populations across the globe, it can be accurately stated that SCS has strong validity, reliability, and low SD
Psychometrics
Reliability and Standard Deviation
Reliability
Over time the SCS has shown strong:
- test-retest reliability (Neff, 2003)
- internal consistency reliability (Neff, 2003)
- inter-rater reliability (Neff, 2017)
Standard deviation has been <1.0 across populations in various settings:
- student
- clinical
- meditators
- community (Neff, 2017)
Good internal consistency
Validity
SCS demonstrates:
- solid construct validity
- strong convergent validity
- with measures of suicidal ideation, depressive symptoms, self-criticism, and mindfulness
- discriminant validity
- self compassion differentiates from other similar constructs such as self esteem
- predictive validity
- higher SCS predicts higher scores on happiness, optimism, life satisfaction, body appreciation, perceived competence, and motivation scales and lower scores on depression, anxiety, stress, rumination, body shame, and fear of failure tests (Neff, et al., 2017)
Validity
Strengths of SCS
Strengths and Limitations
- The SCS is a contributor to the growing movement of Positive Psychology.
- It is a great first step at empirically examining a concept that before was only a theory.
- Potential to be a remediation tool for people with negative self-attitudes- major implications for mental health field as negative self attitudes linked to a multitude of psychiatric problems, including suicide.
- Investigation of a psychological attitude that has the effect of fostering positive attitudes towards oneself while also bolstering connection with others.
Limitations
- The creation of the SCS was based on studies done primarily with White undergraduate students so the beginnings of this scale did not take multicultural factors into consideration.
- further testing has proven it to be valid for low income POC
- Self report measures inherently from the question of whether people even have a certain level of awareness to report accurately.
- Those who repress or avoid negative emotions (a subconscious happening) will have a lot of trouble accurately responding to the scale.
- Experimental methodologies would yield more accurate depiction.
Limitations
References
- López, A., Sanderman, R., Smink, A., Zhang, Y., van
Sonderen, E., Ranchor, A., & Schroevers, M. J. (2015). A Reconsideration of the Self-Compassion Scale's Total Score: Self-Compassion versus Self-Criticism. PloS one, 10(7), e0132940. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0132940.
- Montero-Marin, Kuyken, Crane, Gu, Baer, Al-Awamleh, Akutsu,
Araya-Véliz, Ghorbani, Chen, Kim, Mantzios, Rolim dos Santos, Serramo López, Teleb, Watson, Yamaguchi, Yang and García-Campayo. (2018). Self-Compassion and Cultural Values: A Cross-Cultural Study of Self-Compassion Using a Multitrait-Multimethod (MTMM) Analytical Procedure. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1-15.
- Neff, K.D. (2003). Development and validation of a scale
to measure self-compassion. Self and Identity, 2, 223-250.
- Neff, K. & Germer, C. (2019, February). Self-compassion.
Mindful, February 2019, 42-48.
- Neff, K.D., Whitaker, T., & Karl, A. (2017). Examining the
factor structure of the self-compassion scale in four distinct populations: is the use of a total scale score justified?, Journal of Personality Assessment.