Compassionate Attributes and Action Scale for adolescents: Adaptation and validation

Abstract

Introduction

Compassion can be defined as an intentional sensitivity to the suffering, with a motivation and commitment to try to relieve it, which can have a positive impact on individuals’ emotional and psychological well-being. The relevance of compassion focused therapies is well established and this makes the development of reliable instruments for the assessment of the different facets of compassion targeting different age groups crucial for research and clinical practice. The Compassionate Attributes and Actions Scale (CAAS) aims to assess compassion on three directions: self-compassion, compassion for others or compassion received from others. Each of the scales assesses one's compassionate attributes and compassionate actions separately when dealing with difficult or painful situations.

Objective/aim

This study aimed to adapt the CAAS for adolescents and to explore its factor structure and psychometric properties in a sample of Portuguese adolescents.

Methods

A total of 336 Portuguese adolescents with ages ranging from 12 to 19 years old participated in the study. Several exploratory factor analyses were conducted.

Results

Exploratory factor analysis showed that, except for the attributes section of the self-compassion scale (that showed to be bi-factorial), all the other scales (and their sections) presented a single-factor structure. The three scales, and its sections, demonstrated a good reliability and excellent test-retest reliability and good convergent and discriminant validity.

Conclusion

Results were in line with the factor structure found in the adults’ version. The scales and its sections have shown good psychometric characteristics and constitute a useful instrument to assess and investigate the three directions of the compassion.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.