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The Young Children's Empathy Measure: reliability, validity and effects of companion animal bonding
1Human Development and Family Studies, Kansas State University, Manhattan 66506.
Insights
The Young Children's Empathy Measure effectively assesses empathy in preschoolers. Higher empathy scores correlated with age and social skills, and were linked to having a strong bond with pets.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Child Psychology
Background:
- Empathy is crucial for social development in young children.
- Assessing empathy in preschoolers requires reliable and valid measures.
Purpose of the Study:
- To introduce and validate the Young Children's Empathy Measure (YCEM).
- To examine the relationship between empathy, age, social development, IQ, and pet ownership in preschoolers.
Main Methods:
- Developed the Young Children's Empathy Measure (YCEM) for preschool-aged children.
- Assessed internal reliability (Cronbach's alpha) and interrater reliability.
- Correlated YCEM scores with chronological age, social development, IQ, and pet bond strength.
Main Results:
- The YCEM demonstrated acceptable internal reliability and very high interrater reliability.
- Empathy scores were positively correlated with children's age and social development.
- No significant correlation was found between empathy scores and IQ.
- Empathy towards children was correlated with empathy towards pets.
- Children with a strong pet bond exhibited higher empathy scores for children.
Conclusions:
- The YCEM is a reliable and valid tool for measuring empathy in young children.
- Empathy development in preschoolers is linked to social development and age, but not cognitive ability (IQ).
- A strong connection with pets may foster greater empathy in young children.
Abstract:
The Young Children's Empathy Measure is a brief measure of young children's cognitive and affective perspective taking developed to assess preschool children's empathy. The Cronbach alpha coefficient of internal reliability for the empathy score was acceptable and interrater reliability across four rates was very high. The children's empathy scores were correlated with their ages and social development, but not with their IQs. Empathy toward children was correlated with empathy for pets, and children with a strong pet bond had higher scores on empathy for children than young children without pets.