Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved

Compassion is the capacity for being moved by suffering of others and wanting to help alleviate it. Compassion may mediate health benefits and hazards of social networks/relationships. The monitoring/management of level of compassion across social networks/relationships may be critical to health benefits’ preservation and social networks/relationships’ health hazards prevention. We developed and evaluated the psychometric properties of 10-item self-report measure of compassion among 310 respondents from the University and surrounding communities. The mean total score was 3.62 (SD=1.09). The item-to-total correlations ranged from 0.50–0.71. The mean inter-item correlation was 0.33. The internal consistency was 0.82. The scale correlated well with Sprecher and Fehr’s Compassionate Love Scale (r=0.66; p=.000). Two factors measuring same construct explained 57% of sample variance. The scale is user-friendly, easy to score, and characterized by good psychometric properties. It can be used to foster understanding of the impact of compassion on disease and outcomes across social networks/relationships.