Psychometric evaluation of the persian version of the Social Self-Compassion Scale (SSCS): associations with Perceived Social Self-Efficacy, fear of negative evaluation, and loneliness among female undergraduate students

The Social Self-Compassion Scale (SSCS) was developed to assess self-compassion in social and interpersonal contexts. However, the psychometric properties of the SSCS have not yet been evaluated among Iranian female undergraduate students. This study aimed to translate the SSCS into Persian and examine its psychometric properties among Iranian female undergraduate students. A cross-sectional, correlational design was employed in 2023 using convenience sampling with a sample of 303 female undergraduate students from Alzahra University. Participants completed the Persian version of the SSCS and the Perceived Social Self-Efficacy (PSSE), Adaptive Disengagement Scale (ADS), Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation-II (BFNE-II), and Social and Emotional Loneliness Scale for Adults (SELSA-S). These additional measures were included to examine the convergent and divergent validity of the Persian SSCS by assessing its associations with theoretically related constructs. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 22 and AMOS version 24. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to evaluate the factor structure and model fit, while Cronbach’s alpha and construct reliability (CR) were calculated to assess the internal consistency and reliability of the SSCS. The Persian version of the SSCS demonstrated adequate face and content validity. Regarding reliability, the SSCS exhibited acceptable internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha values exceeding 0.70 for both the positive and negative factors. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) demonstrated acceptable model fit (CMIN/df = 1.42, CFI = 0.96, GFI = 0.93, NFI = 0.93, RMSEA = 0.03). The SSCS was positively correlated with social self-efficacy ( r = 0.45, p < 0.01) and adaptive disengagement ( r = 0.71, p < 0.01), and negatively correlated with fear of negative evaluation ( r = − 0.67, p < 0.01) and social and emotional loneliness ( r = − 0.45, p < 0.01). The Persian version of the SSCS demonstrated acceptable reliability and construct validity for assessing social self-compassion among Iranian female undergraduate students.