Development of an Empathy Rating Scale for Young Children. (January 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kimonis, Eva R.; Jain, Natasha; Neo, Bryan; Fleming, Georgette E.; Briggs, Nancy
• Is Part Of: Assessment. Volume 30:Number 1(2023)
• Page Start: 37
• Page End: 50
• Publication Date: 2023-01
• Subjects: empathy -- assessment -- prosocial behavior -- children -- scale development -- parent-report; Psychological tests -- Periodicals; Psychodiagnostics -- Periodicals; Personality tests -- Periodicals; 150.287
• DOI: 10.1177/10731911211038629
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1073-1911

Abstract

Empathy is critical to young children's socioemotional development and deficient levels characterize a severe and pervasive type of Conduct Disorder (i.e., with limited prosocial emotions). With the emergence of novel, targeted early interventions to treat this psychopathology, the critical limitations of existing parent-report empathy measures reveal their unsuitability for assessing empathy levels and outcomes in young children. The present study aimed to develop a reliable and comprehensive parent-rated empathy scale for young children. This was accomplished by first generating a large list of empathy items sourced from both preexisting empathy measures and from statements made by parents during a clinical interview about their young child's empathy. Second, this item set was refined using exploratory factor analysis of item scores from parents of children aged 2 to 8 years (56.6% male), recruited online using Amazon's Mechanical Turk. A five-factor solution provided the best fit to the data: Attention to Others' Emotions, Personal Distress (i.e., Emotional Contagion/Affective Empathy), Personal Distress–Fictional Characters, Prosocial Behavior, and Sympathy. Total and subscale scores on the new "Measure of Empathy in Early Childhood" (MEEC) were internally consistent. Finally, this five-factor structure was tested using confirmatory factor analysis and model fit was adequate. With further research into the validity of MEEC scores, this new rater-based empathy measure for young children may hold promise for assessing empathy in early childhood and advancing research into the origins of empathy and empathy-related disorders.