Assessment of forgiveness in couple relationships: Adaptation of the Marital Offense-Specific Forgiveness Scale (MOFS) to a Spanish sample

Abstract

Forgiveness plays an important role in couple relationships, as it is essential in overcoming interpersonal offenses and related to the well-being of the relationship. To date, no valid instruments are available for Spanish populations to evaluate forgiveness within marital relationships. This study aims to adapt and evaluate the Marital Offense-Specific Forgiveness Scale (MOFS), comparing the behavior of the scale in two cultural contexts: Spain and the United States.

Two studies were conducted: the first with 389 participants to evaluate the behavior of the scale and to explore the dimensionality of the Spanish version of the MOFS using exploratory factor analysis (EFA); the second study used a sample of 361 Spanish and 119 American participants, conducting a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and an invariance factor analysis.

The EFA revealed two factors: Avoidance–Resentment and Benevolence. Using CFA, the factorial structure of the MOFS was confirmed, with results indicating that the proposed model presents a similar fit to the original version.