Examining the Cross-Cultural Reliability and Validity of the Compassion Fatigue Scale Adapted for Japanese Social Workers Responding to 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami

Background: On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and devastating tsunami, the most powerful ever to hit Japan, struck off the coast of the Tohoku area and killed more than 22,000 people. Hundreds of thousands of people evacuated their homes and still remain in temporary houses. Japanese social workers working with disaster victims have experienced secondary traumatic stress and burnout after assisting victims and hearing victims’ stories. However, few studies have examined secondary traumatic stress and job burnout of Japanese disaster social workers, in part because of the lack of validated scales. The objective of this study was to examine the cross-cultural adaptation and validation of the Compassion Fatigue Scale (Adams, Figley, & Boscarino, 2008) which consists of the secondary trauma and job burnout subscales, with a sample of Japanese social workers who assisted the victims of the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami.

Method: Data were collected using a cross-sectional survey design. Mail surveys were sent to social workers in September-December 2012, who assisted victims of the 2011 Earthquake and Tsunami in the Tohoku area. The total number of completed surveys was 114 with an overall response rate of 40%. Sixty-two percent of the participants were female, and the mean age was 39.1 years (SD=10.01). The mean number of years in practice experience was 9.6 years (SD=.71). Using a 10-point Likert-type scale (1 = never or rarely, 10 = very often), the 13-item Compassion Fatigue scale was adapted and translated to the Japanese language.

Results: Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses for the Compassion Fatigue scale were conducted by using the STATA software. Results of exploratory factor analysis revealed a two-factor solution. Model fit indices for the second-order two-factor structure indicated a good fit, CFI = .93, RMSEA = .08 (95% CI = .06 – .11) and SRMR= .05.  The internal consistency of the scale was found to be good (α = .93). Japanese social workers exhibited a severe level of secondary traumatic stress and job burnout compared to the U.S. social workers who responded to the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

Implications: Findings suggest that the Adapted Compassion Fatigue Scale for Japanese social workers is consistent with the two-factor structure of the original scale developed for the U.S. social workers. Thus, the present study confirmed the cross-cultural applicability of the Compassion Fatigue Scale. The implications of this study are discussed for all disaster social workers including those who have responded to the recent deadly earthquakes that struck Japan and Ecuador in April 2016.