The Toronto Empathy Questionnaire: Scale Development and Initial Validation of a Factor-analytic Solution to Multiple Empathy Measures

Overview

Journal J Pers Assess

Publisher Informa Healthcare

Specialties Psychiatry
Psychology

Date 2008 Dec 17

PMID 19085285

Citations 163

Authors

R Nathan Spreng

Margaret C McKinnon

Raymond A Mar

Brian Levine

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

To formulate a parsimonious tool to assess empathy, we used factor analysis on a combination of self-report measures to examine consensus and developed a brief self-report measure of this common factor. The Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ) represents empathy as a primarily emotional process. In 3 studies, the TEQ demonstrated strong convergent validity, correlating positively with behavioral measures of social decoding, self-report measures of empathy, and negatively with a measure of Autism symptomatology. Moreover, it exhibited good internal consistency and high test-retest reliability. The TEQ is a brief, reliable, and valid instrument for the assessment of empathy.

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