Abstract
The development and establishment of a Swedish translation of the Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy (SEE) was investigated in a sample of 788 participants. The SEE is a self-report instrument and is used to measure empathy directed toward people from ethnic cultural groups who are different from the respondent’s own ethnocultural group. Principal components factor analyses and confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) provided evidence for a four-factor structure. The factors were Acceptance of Cultural Differences, Communicative Ethnocultural Empathy, Ethnocultural Empathic Awareness, and Intellectual Ethnocultural Empathy. The factors were moderately intercorrelated, and additional correlational analyses showed convergent validity in high correlations between the four factors and the two subscales Empathic Concern and Perspective Taking of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI). Possible applications of this scale in a healthcare context are discussed.
Highlights
The word empathy comes from the Greek word empathiea, which means sensing other people’s reactions and entering their world (Campbell & Babrow, 2004)
An initial confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) was used to test if the four-factor structure specified as the four subscales of the Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy (SEE) (Wang et al, 2003) would be obtained
The results showed that these factor loadings failed to validate the original version of the SEE
Summary
The word empathy comes from the Greek word empathiea, which means sensing other people’s reactions and entering their world (Campbell & Babrow, 2004). The Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy (SEE) is the first measure that provides support for the theoretical construct of empathy in multicultural settings. They assume that it is important to identify measures and afterwards find ways to develop the ability of ethnocultural empathy between different ethnic groups in order to reduce conflicts and to increase the level of tolerance, openness, and respect in human relations. Developing a SEE for Swedish settings could give a valuable boost to better understanding of the structure of cultural empathy and thereby make it possible to measure this ability and apply it in different contexts (e.g. institutions, healthcare system, etc.) where people come into contact with individuals from other ethnic backgrounds
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