Development of Empathy Scale for preschool children in Chonburi Provinces

Abstract

This research aimed to develop and to examine the psychometric properties of empathy scale for preschool children in terms of item quality, reliability, and validity of the empathy scale. The 350-preschool children aged between 3 and 5 years from Chonburi province were included in this study.

The results indicated that the five - point empathy scale composed of 35 items and it is demonstrated that every item showed an excellent content validity (CVI = 1.00) and a high reliability (internal consistency = 0.90) for full scale. Furthermore, the two-factor model of empathy scale was confirmed via Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), that is, (1) emotional empathy (17 items) with item-total correlation ranging from 0.21 to 0.60 and internal consistency of 0.76 and (2) cognitive empathy (18 items) with item-total correlation ranging from 0.23 to 0.75 and internal consistency of 0.83. The two-factor model of empathy scale was consistent with empirical data as indicated by the values of Chi-square = 377.83 (df = 464, p = 0.99), GFI = 0.97, AGFI = 0.96, CFI = 1.00, RMSEA = 0.00, and SRMR = 0.04. In conclusion, the overall results suggested that the empathy scale for preschool children is suitable for measuring the empathy for young children.