Zaccari Vittoria, Aceto Marianna, Mancini Francesco
Associazione Scuola di Psicoterapia Cognitiva (APC - SPC), Rome, Italy.
Department of Human Sciences, Marconi University, Rome, Italy.
Front Psychiatry. 2020 Dec 9;11:573488. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2020.573488. eCollection 2020.
Guilt feelings have received considerable attention in past psychological theory and research. Several studies have been conducted that represent a range of views and propose various implications of guilt in children and adolescents. Variations in theoretical definitions of guilt, emphasizing a lack of measurement convergence, make it difficult to derive a comprehensive definition of the construct in childhood and adolescence. Research shows substantial variability in instruments used to measure guilt in children and adolescents. The aim is to discuss existing contributions, illustrating the empirical validity of the available instruments used to measure guilt and identifying the nature of their theoretical backgrounds among children and adolescents. A systematic search was conducted using the following databases: PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed (all years up to February 19, 2020). Search terms were compiled into three concepts for all databases: "measure," "guilt," and "childhood/adolescence." In addition, a search was conducted to detect the gray literature. After removing the duplicates, a total of 1,408 records were screened, resulting in the identification of 166 full-text articles to be further scrutinized. Upon closer examination, there was consensus that 148 of those studies met the study inclusion criteria or were not retrieved. Twenty-five studies were included in the quality assessment. The data were organized on three main categories: (1) interpersonal or prosocial guilt; (2) intrapunitive guilt or that referring to an excessive sense of responsibility; (3) not specifying a theoretical construct. A great heterogeneity in psychometric evaluations and substantial variability in guilt construct emerged. The construct most represented and supported by valid instruments was interpersonal or prosocial guilt. Analysis of the gray literature showed that some instruments were not immediately available to the clinical and scientific communities. The studies analyzed and selected for qualitative review employed various instruments to measure guilt. Results confirmed what is widely documented in the literature about substantial variability in instruments used to measure guilt. We argue the need to develop measures that assess currently overlooked dimensions of guilt and to provide further additional information about the psychometric proprieties of the available developed instruments.
内疚感在过去的心理学理论和研究中受到了相当多的关注。已经开展了几项研究，这些研究代表了一系列观点，并提出了内疚感在儿童和青少年中的各种影响。内疚感的理论定义存在差异，强调缺乏测量一致性，这使得难以得出童年和青少年时期该概念的全面定义。研究表明，用于测量儿童和青少年内疚感的工具存在很大差异。目的是讨论现有研究成果，说明用于测量内疚感的现有工具的实证有效性，并确定儿童和青少年中这些工具的理论背景的性质。使用以下数据库进行了系统检索：PsycINFO、PsycARTICLES、MEDLINE、Scopus、科学网和PubMed（截至2020年2月19日的所有年份）。搜索词被编成三个概念用于所有数据库：“测量”、“内疚感”和“童年/青少年”。此外，还进行了一次搜索以查找灰色文献。去除重复项后，共筛选了1408条记录，最终确定了166篇全文文章进行进一步审查。经过仔细检查，大家一致认为其中148项研究符合研究纳入标准或未被检索到。25项研究被纳入质量评估。数据分为三大类：（1）人际或亲社会内疚感；（2）内罚性内疚感或指过度责任感的内疚感；（3）未明确理论结构。心理测量评估中存在很大异质性，内疚感结构也存在很大差异。有效工具最能代表和支持的结构是人际或亲社会内疚感。对灰色文献的分析表明，一些工具临床和科学界无法立即获取。为定性审查而分析和选择的研究采用了各种工具来测量内疚感。结果证实了文献中广泛记载的用于测量内疚感的工具存在很大差异这一情况。我们认为有必要开发能够评估当前被忽视的内疚感维度的测量方法，并提供有关现有已开发工具的心理测量特性的更多信息。
