Measuring dispositional empathy in South African children

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Psychometrics
• Cross-cultural Psychology

Background:

• Empathy is crucial for child development, influencing aggression and prosocial behavior.
• Existing empathy measures lack validation in Low-to-Middle Income Countries (LMICs).
• Previous studies indicated poor performance of the Griffith Empathy Measure (GEM) in South Africa.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the psychometric properties of two parent-report empathy measures in a South African context.
• To identify a reliable tool for assessing dispositional cognitive and affective empathy in children.
• To address the lack of validated empathy measures for LMICs.

Main Methods:

• Compared the internal consistency reliability of a simplified GEM (SGEM) and the parent-report Questionnaire of Cognitive and Affective Empathy (QCAE).
• Assessed measure convergence and factor structure in a low-to-mid socio-economic status sample (n=440 for QCAE, n=160 for SGEM).

Main Results:

• The parent-report QCAE demonstrated good reliability (α = 0.90) and a supported two-factor structure.
• The SGEM exhibited poor reliability (α = 0.63) and did not correlate with the QCAE.
• QCAE is a suitable measure for child dispositional empathy.

Conclusions:

• The parent-report QCAE is psychometrically sound for assessing child empathy in diverse contexts.
• The QCAE is recommended for future research and clinical assessments in LMICs.
• This study provides a validated tool for empathy measurement in under-resourced settings.