Psychometric properties of the Jefferson Empathy Scale in four nursing student faculties

Abstract

Objective To evaluate the psychometric properties of the Jefferson Medical Empathy Scale, Spanish version (JSE-S), its factorial structure, reliability, and the presence of invariance between genders in the behavior of empathy levels among Chilean nursing students. Method Instrumental research design. The JSE-S was applied to 1,320 nursing students. A confirmatory factor analysis was used. An invariance study between genders was carried out. Descriptive statistics were estimated. Between genders, Student’s T distribution was applied alongside a homoscedasticity analysis. The level of significance was α ≤ 0.05. Results The confirmatory factor analysis determined the existence of three dimensions in the matrix. The statistical results of the invariance tests were significant, and allowed comparison between genders. Differences were found between mean empathy values, as well as in some of its dimensions between genders. Conclusion The factor structure of empathy data and its dimensions is in correspondence with the underlying three-dimensional model. There are differences in empathy levels and their dimensions between genders, with the exception of the compassionate care dimension, which was distributed similarly. Women were more empathetic than men.

Empathy, psychometrics, cut‐off points in nursing students from Latin America

“…The reliability of the instrument, Cronbach's alpha of 0.83, slightly exceeded other calculations derived from Latin American university student samples (ranging from 0.70 to 0.80, with a mean of 0.78) and did so with an intra‐class correlation of 0.83, indicative of good reliability. It is possible to infer that the JSE‐S is a reliable instrument to be used with nursing students in both the countries studied (Pedrero‐Castillo et al., 2021).…”

“…The dependent variables were empathy levels, CC levels, PA levels, WIPS levels and number of clusters, measured with JSE-S (Hojat et al, 2001(Hojat et al, , 2002, in Spanish version (Alcorta-Garza et al, 2005). These measures present varied evidence of reliability and validity in studies with a Latin American university population in the health area (Alcorta-Garza et al, 2005;Pedrero-Castillo et al, 2021;Reyes-Reyes et al, 2021). While the independent variables were country and sex.…”

Psychometric evaluation of the ‘Jefferson Scale of Empathy’ in a sample of nursing students in the United Kingdom

“…These correlation coefficients are generally lower than those reported in other studies of nursing students. For example, the item-total correlation coefficients were 0.20-0.50 as reported by Castillo et al (2021), and 0.52-0.72 as reported by Hsiao et al (2013). Furthermore, the correlation coefficients for two items (item 18 and item 19) were below the threshold of 0.2, indicating that the items do not correlate well with the rest of the items and therefore may be dropped (Field, 2013).…”

“…Face validity was assessed by physicians; validity was established by factor analysis, gender comparison (t = 2.41, p < 0.05) and criterion validity (r = 0.40-0.45); and reliability was obtained by internal consistency (alpha = 0.87 for residents and 0.89 for medical students). Evidence of good psychometric properties of this scale has been shown in later studies of nursing and medical students in various countries (Castillo et al, 2021;Díaz Valentín et al, 2019;Hojat et al, 2018;Hsiao et al, 2013). Demographics (age, gender and ethnicity) and information about participants' experience of working in the care sector were also collected.…”

“…Originally, the scale was developed by Hojat et al (2001) to measure empathy in medical students, it has been applied to measure empathy in various groups of health and allied health professionals and students, such as nurses, pharmacists and occupational therapists (e.g. Castillo et al, 2021;Mirzayeh et al, 2022;Yu et al, 2021). The scale has been used in 88 countries and translated in 59 languages (Thomas Jefferson University, 2022).…”