The Validation of the Trait Forgivingness Scale (TFS)

Introduction. Forgiveness as a strategy to cope with interpersonal offenses (Egan & Todorow, 2009; Worthington, & Scherer, 2004) has been investigated in several cultural contexts (Fehr, Gelfand, & Nag, 2010). Forgiveness research in the past two decades shows that trait-forgiveness, i.e. the disposition to forgive interpersonal transgressions over time and across situations, seems to be linked both to physical and psychological wellbeing. The present study examined the factor structure and internal validity of the Trait Forgivingness Scale (TFS, Berry, Worthington, O'Connor, Parrott, & Wade, 2005) in an Italian context. The TFS evaluates the disposition to forgive interpersonal transgressions over time and across situations. Method. For purposes of cross-validation, we extracted two random samples of, respectively, 270 and 311 participants, balanced by sex and age, to form a “calibration” and a “validation” sample. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was implemented on the “calibration sample” to examine the factorial structure of the TFS. Then Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFAs) was performed on data from the validation sample. Results. The results of the exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported two distinct factors: Forgiving Disposition and Resentment. The mineigen criterion, and the plot of eigenvalues both suggested the extraction of two factors, which accounted for about 63% of variance. In the CFA the model with two orthogonal factors fits well with the data: χ2 (18) = 63.330, p < .01, CFI = .95, TLI = .92, RMSEA = .06 (.05, .08), SRMR = .05. Cronbach’s Alphas were .76 for the first factor and .55 for the second factor. Discussion. These findings extend previous research designed to provide measures to assess and investigate forgivingness, i.e. trait-forgiveness. However, the second factor (resentment) presents a not adequate internal consistency that could represent an important limitation of the study.