Back to Resources

Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Community-based Forgiveness Campaign

Brandon J. Griffin
Loren L. Toussaint
Mitchell Zoelzer
Everett L. Worthington, Jr.
Jennifer A. Coleman
Caroline R. Lavelock
Alec McElroy
Joshua N. Hook
Nathaniel G. Wade
Steven J. Sandage
Mark S. Rye
All your life you’re told forgiveness is for you. But we’re never told why it’s for you. It means you’re working on owning your life.
Shani Tran
Therapist and Founder, The Shani Project
Forgiveness is nothing less than the way we heal the world. We heal the world by healing each and every one of our hearts. The process is simple, but it is not easy.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Back to Resources

Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Community-based Forgiveness Campaign

Brandon J. Griffin
Loren L. Toussaint
Mitchell Zoelzer
Everett L. Worthington, Jr.
Jennifer A. Coleman
Caroline R. Lavelock
Alec McElroy
Joshua N. Hook
Nathaniel G. Wade
Steven J. Sandage
Mark S. Rye
NO. of participants
Date
2018
Type of Evidence
Type of Paper
Primary Empirical Study
Empiricism
open access
Yes
No
sample size
1192

Forgiveness interventions have been employed in individual, couple, family, and group psychotherapy. Few attempts have been made to deliver forgiveness interventions via community-based campaigns. In the current field study, we administered a community-based forgiveness campaign to an entire university campus. A quasi-experimental design was used in which multiple pre-tests were compared to post-test scores on a psychometrically sound measure of forgiveness as well as single items assessing forgiveness, love, and conflict across students’ relationships with others in the community (i.e. friends, roommates, teachers, and parents). Multilevel models were specified to compare repeated scores from the baseline phase to post-intervention phase scores. Findings indicated that community-based approaches are a viable method of promoting forgiveness that may serve as a less intense but more easily disseminated and less costly approach to promoting forgiveness than traditional modalities of psychological treatment. Implications for future empirical investigation and clinical application are discussed.

Research
North America
Mental Health Professionals
Supporting Research
No items found.
Share this resource

Related Resources