Self-compassion involves relating to ourselves with self-kindness and less self-judgment, feelings of common humanity and fewer feelings of isolation, mindfulness and decreased overidentification in situations of perceived failure, inadequacy, or personal suffering. Most research on self-compassion uses the Self-Compassion Scale (SCS) to measure the construct. The SCS is considered to be reliable and appears to have adequate convergent, discriminant, predictive, and known-groups validity. There is an ongoing discussion about whether self-compassion is better measured as a global construct or whether it is best measured as two separate constructs which represent compassionate versus reduced uncompassionate self-responding. The application of the state-of-the-art bifactor-ESEM framework to the factor structure of the SCS supports the existence of a global self-compassion factor as well as the six specific dimensions but does not support the use of two separate factors. Adaptations of the SCS include a short version, a youth version, a state version, and a measure of compassion for others.