Tani, F., Lauro Grotto, R., & Ponti, L.
A bidimensional instrument to assess the sense of guilt in childhood: The Guilt Feelings Scale for Children (GFS_C)
In the psychoanalytical theoretical perspective the sense of guilt has been formulated in terms of the two related constructs: persecutory guilt and reparative guilt. The focus of this paper is to develop a bidimensional scale of the sense of guilt for children and verify its conceptual structure via exploratory and confirmatory approaches. Starting from two scales for adults proposed by Caprara, Perugini, Pastorelli, and Barbaranelli (1990), the authors develop the Guilt Feelings Scale for Children (GFS_C) which in the final version includes nine items for Persecutory Guilt Feelings (P-GFS_C), nine items for Reparative Guilt Feelings (R-GFS_C), and six control items. The sample was composed of 242 Italian children (132 males and 110 females), aged 8-11. Overall, results confirmed the hypothesized structure of the scale providing a good level of fit of the model to the data. Finally, the results showed a good internal consistency of the global scale and of both the subscales.
Testing, Psychometrics, Methodology in Applied Psychology, 2015, Vol. 22, pp. 461-476, DOI: 10.4473/TPM22.4.2
