The Challenge: Measuring the Responsiveness of Compassion Measures

When we published our original review of compassion measures in healthcare, one of the prevalent psychometric gaps was responsiveness—the ability of a measure to detect meaningful changes in the construct (i.e. compassion) being measured over time. In an updated review, the Sinclair Compassion Questionnaire (SCQ) demonstrated the strongest overall psychometric evidence among available compassion measures, achieving the highest overall EMPRO (Evaluating Measures of Patient-Reported Outcomes) score and outperforming other measures across several key domains, including internal consistency, reliability, validity, and respondent burden. However, responsiveness remained an underdeveloped and insufficiently evaluated domain across these measures, including the SCQ.

The Preliminary Evidence: The Responsiveness of the SCQ

A recently published feasibility trial of the EnACT (Evidence-informed, Competency-based, Accredited, Compassion Training) program may help address that gap. The study evaluated a compassion training intervention among healthcare providers, while simultaneously measuring patients' experiences of compassion over time using the SCQ.

The findings were encouraging--both in terms of the impact of the EnACT Compassion Training Program and the preliminary evidence supporting the SCQ's responsiveness.

One month following the training intervention, patients cared for by healthcare providers who completed the EnACT program reported significantly higher compassion scores than patients in the control sites. The SCQ detected a moderate effect size difference between groups, suggesting that it was sufficiently sensitive  to detect changes associated with a compassion educational intervention.

From a measurement perspective, while these results represent preliminary evidence, they are nonetheless important. A comprehensive evaluation of a measure requires evidence that it can not only accurately assess the construct of interest, but also detect meaningful changes in that construct over time when change is expected. While additional research is still needed, the EnACT trial provides preliminary evidence that the SCQ can identify changes in patients' experiences of compassion following a targeted educational intervention.

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The SCQ, a detailed instruction manual, and scoring instructions are available for researchers and clinicians at www.compassionmeasure.com. For more information about the SCQ, including validated translations, please email info@compassionresearchlab.com

If you are interested in learning more about the Compassion Research Lab's Compassion Training Program--EnACT, visit us at www.compassiontraining.com

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