Abstract
Objectives
This study aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Fears of Compassion Scales (FCS) in a Chinese cultural context.
Methods
Six hundred eighty-four undergraduate students from a university in Fujian Province completed a set of questionnaires including the FCS, Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21) and Self-acceptance Questionnaire (SAQ). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), Exploratory Structural Equation (ESEM) and other statistic approaches were conducted to investigate the psychometric properties of the FCS.
Results
The three models of one-factor structure for each subscale of the FCS and the final model of the three-factor structure with 31 items showed good fit to the data. Seven items of the FCS did not show adequate psychometric characteristics and were thus removed from the scale. Moreover, fears of compassion (for others, from others, and for self) were positively correlated with depression, anxiety, and stress, and were negatively associated with self-acceptance and self-evaluation as expected.
Conclusions
The FCS had good internal reliability, acceptable factorial validity, and satisfactory criterion-related validity in a Chinese sample. This study provides relatively strong support for the FCS as a promising instrument for use in future research and practice with Chinese populations.
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Funding
This study was supported by the Fujian Provincial Social Sciences Planning Fund for Young scholars (NO. FJ2017C036).
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MG was the project leader, led the study design, guided the data analysis, wrote and revised the manuscript. JW collaborated with the study design, executed the study, analyzed the data, and wrote the paper. JD collaborated with the study design, data analysis, editing, and proofreading of the manuscript. JNK collaborated with the design, editing, and proofreading of the final manuscript. Mingchun Guo and Jingyun Wang contributed equally to this work and should be considered as co-first authors and proofreading of the final manuscript.
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The study was granted ethical clearance by ethical review board of University of Queensland (17-PSYCH-4-85-JMC).
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Guo, M., Wang, J., Day, J. et al. Validation of the Fears of Compassion Scale in a Chinese Cultural Context. Mindfulness 12, 683–692 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-020-01534-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-020-01534-z