Heartland Forgiveness Scale

Technical Manual

Script Author: Katja Borchert, Ph.D. (katjab@millisecond.com), Millisecond

Created: January 06, 2016

Last Modified: January 03, 2025 by K. Borchert (katjab@millisecond.com), Millisecond

Background

This script implements a computerized version of the Heartland Forgiveness Scale as described in Thompson et al (2005).

References

Thompson, L. Y., Snyder, C. R., Hoffman, L., Michael, S. T., Rasmussen, H. N., Billings, L. S., Heinze, L., Neufeld, J. E., Shorey, H. S., Roberts, J. C, & Roberts, D. E. (2005). Dispositional forgiveness of self, others, and situations. Journal of Personality, 73, 313-359.

Online Resource: https://heartlandforgiveness.com/ -> questionnaire -> scoring guidelines

Duration

3 minutes

Description

18 7-point Likert Scale questions designed to assess a person’s dispositional forgiveness.

Questions 1-6: subscale 'self' questions 7-12: subscale 'others' questions 13-18: subscale 'situations'

Instructions

see section Editable Instructions. General instructions are presented as an htm-page.
To change instructions, change the htm file directly.
Instructions are taken from HFS-with-Scoring-and-Interpretation.pdf
(https://heartlandforgiveness.com/) and adapted to the response format used in this script

Scoring

Source: HFS-with-Scoring-and-Interpretation.pdf (https://heartlandforgiveness.com/)

Hfstotal

One’s score on the Total HFS indicates how forgiving a person tends to be of oneself, other people,
and uncontrollable situations. Higher scores indicate higher levels of forgiveness, and lower scores
indicate lower levels of forgiveness.
• A score of 18 to 54 on the Total HFS indicates that one is usually unforgiving of oneself,
others, and uncontrollable situations.
• A score of 55 to 89 on the Total HFS indicates that one is about as likely to forgive, as one is
not to forgive oneself, others, and uncontrollable situations.
• A score of 90 to 126 on the Total HFS indicates that one is usually forgiving of oneself,
others, and uncontrollable situations.

Hfs Subscales

One’s score on the three HFS subscales indicate how forgiving a person tends to be of oneself (HFS
Forgiveness of Self), other people (HFS Forgiveness of Others), or situations beyond anyone’s control
(HFS Forgiveness of Situations). Higher scores indicate higher levels of forgiveness, and lower scores
indicating lower levels of forgiveness.
• A score of 6 to 18 on HFS Forgiveness of Self, HFS Forgiveness of Others, or HFS
Forgiveness of Situations indicates that one is usually unforgiving of oneself, other people,
or uncontrollable situations, respectively.
• A score of 19 to 29 indicates that one is about as likely to forgive as to not forgive oneself,
other people, or uncontrollable situations, respectively.
• A score of 30 to 42 indicates that one is usually forgiving of oneself, other people, or
uncontrollable situations, respectively."

Summary Data

File Name: heartlandforgivenessscale_summary.iqdat' (Inquisit Lab: one data file per participant)

Data Fields

Name	Description
inquisit.version	Inquisit version number
computer.platform	Device platform: win \| mac \|ios \| android
computer.touch	0 = device has no touchscreen capabilities; 1 = device has touchscreen capabilities
computer.hasKeyboard	0 = no external keyboard detected; 1 = external keyboard detected
startDate	Date the session was run
startTime	Time the session was run
subjectId	Participant ID
groupId	Group number
sessionId	Session number
elapsedTime	Session duration in ms
completed	0 = Test was not completed 1 = Test was completed
hfsTotal	Total HFS score (Range: 18-126)
hfsSelf	Total of the self-subscale (questions1-6) (Range: 6-42) reversed items automatically scored reversed
hfsOthers	Total of the others-subscale (questions7-12) (Range: 6-42) reversed items automatically scored reversed
hfsSituations	Total of the situations-subscale (questions13-18) (Range: 6-42) reversed items automatically scored reversed

Raw Data

File Name: heartlandforgivenessscale.iqdat

Data Fields

Name	Description
date	Date the session was run
time	Time the session was run
subject	Participant ID
group	Group number
session	Session number
build	Inquisit version number
q*_response	Response given (in assigned values) Scale: 1 (almost always false) - 7 (almost always true) R = automatically reversed scored questions
q*_latency	How much time (in ms) the participant spent on the surveyPage with this particular question (the last time this particular surveyPage was visited)