Abstract
Medical professionals require adequate abilities to identify others’ emotions and express personal emotions. We aimed to determine the validity and reliability of an empathy measuring tool in medical students for this study. We employed Spreng’s Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ) as a starting point for this validation. The process was performed in several steps, including an English-Romanian-English translation and a focus group meeting to establish each question’s degree of understandability and usability, with minor improvements of wording in each step. We checked internal and external consistency in a pilot group (n = 67). For construct and convergent validity, we used a sample of 649 students. The overall internal and external reliability performed well, with Cronbach’s alpha = 0.727 and respective ICC = 0.776. The principal component analysis resulted in 3 components: prosocial helping behavior, inappropriate sensitivity, dismissive attitude. Component 1 includes positively worded questions, and components 2 and 3 include negatively worded questions. Women had significantly higher scores than men in convergent validity, but we did not highlight any differences for other demographic factors. The Romanian version of the TEQ is a reliable and valid tool to measure empathy among undergraduate medical students that may be further used in subsequent research.
Highlights
Communication forms the basis of interconnection, indispensable for the survival of humankind, allowing for a satisfying physical, mental and social life [1], albeit through verbal, visual, tactile, or, more recently, artificial methods
Empathy determines an altruistic behavior to help others when suffering, which is an essential human trait that we aim to develop in medical students
The Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ) validation was performed in several steps (Figure 1)
Summary
Communication forms the basis of interconnection, indispensable for the survival of humankind, allowing for a satisfying physical, mental and social life [1], albeit through verbal, visual, tactile, or, more recently, artificial methods. In our current multifaceted and interconnected society, dominated by many different types of struggles, effective, adequate, and easy communication is essential. To this aim, we must think about what makes for an effective style of communication to benefit everyday interrelationships, especially when it comes to healthcare and the training of future health professionals. As a multidimensional and essential trait of adequate human connections, empathy has been at the forefront of psychological research since the end of the nineteenth century [2].
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