Dimensions of Grace: Factor Analysis of Three Grace Scales

Measuring grace is challenging. Prior research found the Grace Scale (GS), Richmont Grace Scale (RGS), and The Amazing Grace Scale (TAGS) to be reliable, have promising convergent and divergent validity, and to inter-correlate strongly. However, they may tap different constructs, or grace may be multidimensional (Bufford, Blackburn, Sisemore, & Bassett, 2015). Here two exploratory factor analyses of the combined items showed five factors: experiencing God’s grace, costly grace, grace to self, grace from others, and grace to others, partially paralleling Watson, Chen and Sisemore (2011). Items from all three scales loaded on Factor 1, only items from the RGS loaded on Factor 2. The remaining factors were mostly GS items and a few RGS items. The three scales measure somewhat different constructs. Preliminary validity for the five factors is promising. Regressions showed that combinations of the other four proposed scales accounted for at most about one third of the variance on any given grace factor. The five factors showed different patterns of relationships to criterion variables. We propose a 36 item Dimensions of Grace Scale combining items from all three scales for further exploration

Preliminary Analyses of Three Measures of Grace: Can They be Unified?

Grace is an interesting and potentially significant domain within positive psychology, but remains largely neglected. The present study examined the relationships among three known grace scales to evaluate the potential for creating a stronger single measure. It also explored their relationships to several other religious/spiritual measures to examine whether the three scales are measuring the same construct, to explore the implications for our understanding of grace, and to provide insights for further study. The three measures had moderately strong correlations with each other (r= .55 to .66), had similar relationships to other measures of religion/spirituality, and had distinct relationships to measures of psychological health and distress. This suggested that the three scales measure somewhat different constructs. Two grace scales showed significant negative skew, indicating ceiling problems. Differences in the underlying grace constructs, contamination by other concepts, or an underlying multidimensional structure for grace could account for these differences. Further study should better articulate the constructs underlying grace measures, address problems related to negative skew in responses, and clarify whether grace is multidimensional