Construct Validity and Reliability of a New Spanish Empathy Questionnaire for Children and Early Adolescents

Abstract

Empathy is a basic socio-emotional process of human development that involves the ability to perceive, share, and understand the emotional states of others. This process is essential to successful social functioning. However, despite its significance, empathy has been difficult to define and measure, particularly when incorporating both its emotional and cognitive aspects. The purpose of this study was to develop an Empathy Questionnaire for children aged 9–12 years based on a model of social cognitive neuroscience and to analyze its construct validity and reliability. This questionnaire aimed to integrate the following aspects: emotional contagion, self-other awareness, perspective-taking, emotional regulation, and empathic action. Three studies were conducted. Study 1 evaluated the discriminative power of the items and studied the underlying structure of the instrument using exploratory factor analysis. In Study 2, confirmatory factor analysis was performed to test the model obtained. Finally, the goal of Study 3 was to analyze the convergent and discriminant validity of the questionnaire and the internal consistency of its dimensions. The final version of the instrument contained 15 items that operationalized the previously listed dimensions. The results of the 3 studies indicated that the questionnaire had good validity and reliability. This study has important implications for research and clinical practice. Given its simplicity and brevity, this new self-report scale may work well as a screening method to evaluate the key psychological issues underlying numerous child behaviors that predict the success or failure of social relationships, individual quality of life, and mental well-being.

Genetic and environmental influences on structure of the social brain in childhood

“…An important aim of this study was to relate the structural brain measures to prosocial behavior, as this behavior is often associated with the functioning of the social brain ( Blakemore, 2008 ). For this purpose we focused on parent-report measures of prosocial behavior and empathy, as these measures encompass multiple contexts ( Carlo and Randall, 2002 ) and reporting complex social behaviors such as prosocial behavior and empathy might be challenging for children ( Richaud et al, 2017 ). We found that both prosocial behavior and empathy show strong influences of genetics, which is consistent with earlier studies reporting high estimates of heritability for parent-reported prosocial behavior (39–69 %) and empathy (34–76 %; Gregory et al (2009) ; Knafo-Noam et al (2015) ; Knafo and Plomin (2006) ; Knafo et al (2008) ; Melchers et al, 2016 .…”

Attachment Style Classification Questionnaire for latency age: Psychometrics properties of Argentine Sample

“…To analyze the concurrent validity, the attachment categories obtained in the ASCQ were correlated with the dimensions of empathy: emotional contagion, perspective taking and empathic attitude (Richaud et al, 2017), as well as with prosociality Richaud, Mesurado, & Lemos, 2018). The results supported the Hypothesis 3, indicating significant and positive correlations of secure attachment with all the dimensions of empathy mentioned above, and with prosociality.…”

“…It contains 15 items, three for each dimension, which are answered on a 5-point scale (from always to never). The questionnaire demonstrated adequate reliability and construct validity (Richaud et al, 2017). In this study, McDonald's omega coefficients ranged from .71 to .83.…”

“…2. Empathy Questionnaire for children aged 9 to 12 years (Richaud, Lemos, Mesurado, & Oros, 2017): Empathy Questionnaire for children aged 9 to 12 years integrated the following aspects: emotional contagion, self-other awareness, perspective-taking, emotional regulation, and empathic action. It contains 15 items, three for each dimension, which are answered on a 5-point scale (from always to never).…”

“…This questionnaire was taken out from Values in Action Inventory of Strengths (Peterson & Seligman, 1999) in a revised version of the Kindness and Generosity subscale (Spanish version by Padilla-Walker & Christensen, 2011;Richaud et al, 2017;Mesurado, Guerra, De Sanctis, & Rodriguez, 2019) and was used to study prosocial behavior. It has 27 items, divided into three groups of 9 that correspond to the different targets: friend, stranger, and family (sample items).…”