The Basic Empathy Scale in Chinese College Students: Adaptation and Psychometric Properties of a Revised Form

Yin Chen; Guangbo Dou; Liang Chen

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.774199

The Basic Empathy Scale in Chinese College Students: Adaptation and Psychometric Properties of a Revised Form

Front Psychol. 2021 Dec 1:12:774199. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.774199. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Yin Chen¹, Guangbo Dou¹, Liang Chen²

Affiliations

¹ College of Kinesiology, Shenyang Sport University, Shenyang, China.
² School of Marxism, University of Science and Technology Liaoning, Anshan, China.

Abstract

This study aimed to revise the Chinese version of the Basic Empathy Scale for college students. The cluster random sampling method was used to select 805 college students from two universities to conduct confirmatory factor analysis, correlation analysis, reliability analysis, and an independent samples t-test. The confirmatory factor analysis model illustrated that the two-factor model failed to fit the data, and the two-factor model with methodological effect was finally accepted. Therefore, the questionnaire exhibits a strong methodological effect among Chinese college students which requires further study. Emotional and cognitive empathy had a significant positive correlation with gratitude and Internet altruism behavior, which showed good convergent validity. The gender difference test revealed that the emotional empathy level of girls was significantly higher than that of boys. The revised Basic Empathy Scale showed acceptable reliability and validity.

Keywords: BES; college students; exploratory structural equation modeling; psychometric properties; revision.