The validation of a Mandarin version of the Empathy Components Questionnaire (ECQ-Chinese) in Chinese samples.

Yabo Ge, Chris Ashwin, Fengying Li, Wei Cao, Yu Zhang, Xuan Zhao, Binghai Sun, Weijian Li

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Citations (SciVal)

Abstract

Empathy involves both empathic ability and empathic motivation. An important topic has been how to measure empathic ability and motivation simultaneously in both clinical and non-clinical samples and across different cultures. The Empathy Components Questionnaire (ECQ) is a self-report questionnaire that measures empathic ability and motivation in a questionnaire. The current study aimed to validate the Mandarin Chinese version of the ECQ (ECQ-Chinese) in three Chinese samples. In study 1, a total of 538 Chinese participants (Sample 1) completed the ECQ-Chinese via an online survey, and existing measures of empathy and related constructs which were used for criterion validity. In study 2, a total of 104 participants (Sample 2) were recruited again from sample 1 and completed the ECQ-Chinese three weeks later to investigate test-retest reliability. In study 3, a further 324 participants (Sample 3) completed the ECQ-Chinese for confirmatory factor analysis. The results showed that the ECQ-Chinese has a good internal consistency reliability, split-half reliability, and criterion validity (Study 1), and a good test-retest reliability (Study 2). Further, Study 3 found that a 22-item ECQ-Chinese consisting of five subscales had a good construct validity, convergence validity and discriminate validity, demonstrating it to be a suitable tool for the measurement of empathic ability and motivation in Chinese samples and to carry out cross-cultural studies of empathy and its components.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere0275903
JournalPLoS ONE
Volume18
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 26 Jan 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
Copyright: © 2023 Ge et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31871124).

FundersFunder number
National Natural Science Foundation of China31871124

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