Date of Award

2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

Department

Graduate Department of Clinical Psychology

First Advisor

Ken Logan

Second Advisor

Rodger Bufford

Third Advisor

Luann Foster

Abstract

Recent research efforts in positive psychology and virtue ethics have inspired psychological research on many topics, including forgiveness, gratitude, optimism, character development, meaning development, and positive coping. A recent addition to this research has included the concept of grace. Emmons et al. (2017) define grace as “a gift given unconditionally and voluntarily to an undeserving person by an unobligated giver, the giver being either human or divine” (p. 279). One significant advancement in the study of grace includes the design of a research instrument to assess the experience of grace called the Dimensions of Grace Scale (Bufford et al., 2017). The current study aims to replicate previous work on the DGS and contribute to validating the measure on a more diverse population sample. Findings indicated the Revised Dimensions of Grace Scale (DGS-R) upheld the five-factor structure. Only two factors changed in meaning, with Factor 3 changing from Grace to Self to Graciousness with Self and Others and Factor 5 changing from Grace to Others to Unconditional Grace. Each factor decreased from seven or eight items to five, lowering the total number of items on the DGS from 36 items to 25 items. Correlation analysis of the five factors to criterion measures revealed positive significant relationships between the experience of grace and gratitude, spiritual well- being, positive religious coping skills, existential well-being, and religious well-being. The analysis also revealed significant negative relationships between some of the five factors and shame, global distress, negative religious coping, and adverse childhood experiences.

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