Psychometrics Evaluation of Forgiveness Scale and Satisfaction with Life Scale

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KSM3313

Psychological testing 1

Assignment 2

Report

Name                : Fatin Nur Jannah binti Nordin

Matric no        : D20151071599

Group                 : B

Lecturer        : Dr Hazalizah hamzah

Introduction

This report is a part of the assignment of the Psychological Testing I, KSM3313. This assignment required the researcher to develop a scale related to any topic of their own interests. The researcher has developed a Forgiveness Scale and has administered the scale along with Satisfaction with Life Scale. This survey was administered online by using Google Form. The respondents are chosen randomly with no restriction to any specific gender. The time taken to complete this survey is approximately 10-15 minutes.

This report seeks to determine the reliability, validity and item analyses of the questionnaire. The results and recommendations were discussed in this report.

Background of The Forgiveness Scale

Forgiveness is harbouring good will by abandoning all the negative feelings toward the guilty person after the act of offense (McCullough & Witvliet, 2001). Self-forgiveness and forgiving someone else are two different situations (Macaskill, 2012). The act of forgiveness can be manifested in different forms such as self-forgiveness, forgiving someone else, ethnic groups’ forgiving each other, and international forgiveness (Hepp-Dax, 1996). Self-forgiveness and forgiving someone else are two different situations (Macaskill, 2012). Sometimes, the individual may display regret, self-accusatory attitudes and negative reactions towards himself (Strelan, 2007). The Forgiveness Scale was developed by the researcher to measure one’s forgiving behaviour. This scale was based on

The Forgiveness Scale consists of 23 items with 13 items representing Interpersonal Forgiveness and 10 items representing Intrapersonal Forgiveness. Items are each scored on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from ‘strongly disagree to ‘strongly agree’. The example item for the interpersonal forgiveness subscale is “I learn from my past mistake” while its reversed item is “I blame myself for making wrong choices in the past”. For intrapersonal forgiveness subscale, example of the item is “I can forgive a friend who breaks a promise” while its reversed item is “the wrongdoings of others keep playing in my mind”. Scores on the forgiveness scale can be interpreted by adding up the total scores of items across subscales. Higher scores indicate higher tendency to forgive.

Background of Satisfaction with Life Scale

The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) is a short 5-item instrument developed by Diener, Emmons, Larsen & Griffin (1905). The scale does not assess any particular domain such as health and finance but involves the subject’s conscious evaluative judgement of his/her life by using his/her own criteria. The SWLS is a 7-point Likert style response scale ranging from 1 (Highly disagree) to 7 (Highly Agree). Some of the SWLS items refer to the past (e.g., “If I lived my life over, I would not change anything”), whereas others appear to refer more to the present (e.g., “The conditions of my life are excellent.”). It contains no negative item.

Scores on the SWLS can be interpreted in terms of absolute as well as relative life satisfaction. A score of 20 represents the neutral point on the scale, the point at which the respondent is about equally satisfied and dissatisfied. For example, scores between 21 and 25 represent slightly satisfied, and scores between 15 and 19 represent slightly dissatisfied with life. Scores between 26 and 30 represent satisfied, and scores from 5 to 9 are indicative of being extremely dissatisfied with life. 

Background of Respondent

Table 1: Background of respondent[pic 2]

Demographic information                                        Frequency    Percent (%)

Gender

Male                                                                        16        22.86        

Female        54        77.14        

Age                                                                        

20-22                                                                        68        97.14        

23-25                                                                        2        2.86        

Race

Malay                                                                        62        88.57        

Chinese                                                                4        5.71        
Indian                                                                        4        5.71

Total                                                                         70                

Table 1 details the demographic information of 70 respondents who were involved in this study. The highest percentage consisted of female respondents from

Reliability analysis

The reliability of the scale was calculated based on the data obtained from 70 respondents age ranging from 20-25 years old. For the Forgiveness Scale.  The Cronbach’s Alpha value values were calculated with respect to each item in order to determine the internal consistency coefficients of the reliability of the scale.

The acceptable values of alpha ranges from .70 to .95 (Dennick & Tavakol, 2011. According to table 2, the Cronbach’s Alpha v

alue for all 23 items of the Forgiveness Scale was calculated to be .788. Hence, the scale is reliable. As a result of this analysis, the items that were more pertinent and those proved to be problematic in terms of total-item correlation were identified.