Compassion Questionnaire towards Others (CQO)

Abstract

The Compassion Questionnaire towards Others (CQO; Khoury, Vergara, Spinelli et al., 2023) is a psychological instrument developed in conjunction with the Compassion Questionnaire towards Self (CQS) to precisely operationalize the construct of compassion towards others. This operationalization is grounded in four core, trainable dimensions: affective, cognitive, behavioral, and interpersonal dimensions. These dimensions represent measurable skills that can be cultivated through practice and training.

The scale development process included expert consultation with graduate students and field specialists for item generation. The initial pool consisted of 36 items—both positive and negative—designed to maintain structural and content similarity with the CQS while focusing on simple, specific emotions, cognitions, or behaviors. Following rigorous content validity analysis and linguistic refinement, the 36-item measure was subsequently tested across three studies utilizing samples of Canadian adults. Psychometric analysis ultimately reduced the instrument to 19 final items distributed across three distinct empirical dimensions, with comprehensive results supporting its reliability and validity.

Keywords

Compassion Towards Others, Thinking and Feeling Compassionately, Connection with Others, Acting Compassionately, Emotional Responses, Prosocial Behavior, Social Connectedness, Psychological Assessment.

Authors

Khoury, Bassam; Vergara, Rodrigo C.; Spinelli, Christina

Purpose

The primary objective of the CQO is to provide a standardized tool for assessing and operationalizing compassion towards others. The instrument defines compassion as a measurable set of affective, cognitive, behavioral, and interpersonal skills and abilities.

Crucially, the CQO was developed specifically to be conceptually and psychometrically independent of the construct of mindfulness. This allows researchers and practitioners to isolate and measure compassion as a distinct set of skills, facilitating targeted training and intervention strategies focused purely on compassionate engagement.

Construct

The CQO measures Compassion towards Others, which is conceptually modeled as a multidimensional set of abilities rather than a unitary trait. The theoretical model initially proposed four distinct dimensions, each representing a facet of compassionate engagement:

• The affective dimension (emotional resonance and response to suffering).
• The cognitive dimension (understanding and thinking compassionately).
• The behavioral dimension (taking action to alleviate suffering).
• The interpersonal dimension (connection and rapport with others).

Through empirical validation, the final 19-item measure was confirmed to load onto three inter-related, distinct subscales:

• Thinking and feeling compassionately
• Connection with others
• Acting compassionately

Validity

The validity of the CQO was established through multiple statistical methods, confirming both its internal structure and its relationship with external variables.

Construct Validity: The structural integrity of the measure was supported by robust results derived from the factor analysis procedures (EFA and CFA), confirming that the items appropriately measure the hypothesized underlying construct of compassion towards others.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity: The CQO demonstrated expected patterns of association with other psychological measures. The thinking and feeling dimension showed a medium correlation, while the interpersonal dimension showed a medium-to-low correlation with related constructs. The acting dimension exhibited a very weak association. For discriminant validity, the CQO showed low or insignificant correlations with measures of general symptomatology, indicating that it measures compassion rather than the absence of distress. Conversely, the CQO exhibited a positive association with scales measuring emotion regulation, supporting its convergent validity. While most CQO subscales remained stable across repeated timepoints, the Acting Compassionately subscale displayed an unexpected, statistically significant decreasing trend (p = 0.03) at follow-up.

Reliability

The reliability of the CQO was primarily assessed through measures of internal consistency, demonstrating strong coherence among scale items.

Internal Consistency: The overall internal consistencies for the CQO ranged robustly between 0.86 and 0.92 across the samples tested. The Acting Compassionately subscale consistently presented the lowest internal consistencies, though these remained within acceptable and good ranges (Cronbach’s Alpha and Total Omega values were 0.85 and 0.87 for the respective sample halves). Furthermore, a split-half cross-validation procedure incorporating bootstrapping confirmed the stability and robustness of the three-subscale structure, supporting adequate to good internal consistencies for the scores yielded by the measure.

Factor Analysis

The factor structure of the CQO was rigorously tested using both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) across separate halves of the overall Canadian adult sample, confirming the final 19-item, three-factor model.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA): The EFA was conducted on the first half of the sample and successfully supported the three-factor solution without requiring the removal of any of the 19 final items. Key indices confirmed adequate fit:

• TLI (Tucker-Lewis Index): 0.87
• RMSEA (Root Mean Square Error of Approximation): 0.08
• SRMR (Standardized Root Mean Square Residual): 0.04
• KMO (Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy): 0.87

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA): The CFA was applied to the second half of the sample to confirm the structure identified by the EFA. The results indicated a stable structure with adequate fit to the data:

• CFI (Comparative Fit Index): 0.91
• TLI (Tucker-Lewis Index): 0.90
• RMSEA (Root Mean Square Error of Approximation): 0.08
• SMR (Standardized Mean Residual): 0.05

Instrument

Test Type: Original

Format: Items are rated on a Likert scale, ranging from 1 (almost never) to 5 (almost always).

Language Available: English

Population Group: Human (Male, Female)

Age Group: Adulthood (18 years and older), including Young Adulthood (18-29 yrs), Thirties (30-39 yrs), Middle Age (40-64 yrs), and Aged (65 yrs and older).

Population Details:

• Location: Canada
• Respondents: Adults, University Students
• Number of Items: 19-item measure
• Factors and Subscales:
• Thinking and feeling compassionately
• Connection with others
• Acting compassionately

Test Methodology: Test Validity, Construct Validity, Content Validity, Convergent Validity, Discriminant Validity, Test Reliability, Internal Consistency, Factor Analysis, Confirmatory Factor Analysis, Exploratory Factor Analysis.

Keywords

Compassion Towards Others, Psychological Assessment, Affective Skills, Cognitive Skills, Interpersonal Skills, Psychometrics, Scale Development.

Authors

Khoury, Bassam

• Author ORCID Identifier: No data is Available
• Affiliation Email addresses: [email protected]
• Correspondence Address: McGill University, Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology, 3700 McTavish Street, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H3A 1Y2.

Vergara, Rodrigo C.

• Author ORCID Identifier: No data is Available
• Affiliation Email addresses: No data is Available
• Correspondence Address: No data is Available

Spinelli, Christina

• Author ORCID Identifier: No data is Available
• Affiliation Email addresses: No data is Available
• Correspondence Address: No data is Available

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Permissions: Required to contact the Corresponding Author for usage permissions.

Fee: No fee is required for usage.

Test Year: 2023

Commercial: Not for commercial use.

Reference’s

Khoury, B., Vergara, R. C., & Spinelli, C. (2023). Compassion Questionnaires: Scales development and validation. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 47(6), 1006–1032. DOI: 10.1007/s10608-023-10416-2

Items of the Compassion Questionnaire towards Others (CQO)

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

Test items are not available in the provided text.