BACKGROUND: During the last years, there has been a growing interest in self-compassion. Empirical evidences show that self-compassion is associated with psychological benefits among young adults and it might be considered a buffer factor in several mental disorders. AIMS: The aim of this study was to validate the psychometric properties of the Self-compassion Scale (SCS: Neff, 2003a) after the initial lack of replicating the original six-factor structure. METHOD: Data were collected from the overall database of a research centre (56 men and 305 women; mean age = 25.19) and comprised four groups: borderline personality disorder, anxiety disorder, eating disorder and general population. RESULTS: Confirmatory factor analysis supported a two-factor model (self-compassionate attitude versus self-critical attitude) with good internal consistencies, construct-related validity and external validity. Configural, weak measurement and structural invariance of the two-factor model of SCS were also shown. CONCLUSIONS: Findings support the generalizability of the two-factor model and show that both properties and interpretations of scores on self-compassion are equivalent across these population groups. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. KEY PRACTITIONER MESSAGE: A two-factor structure of SCS with strong psychometric validity was supported in clinical and non-clinical samples. Helping individuals with limited experiences of compassion to develop positive internal processing systems seems to be related with better mental health, self-acceptance and self-nurturing abilities. The non-probabilistic sampling limits the generalization of our conclusions.
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