Validity and reliability study of the Turkish version of the Empathy Quotient- 8 in Turkish university students

Abstract

Background: Empathy is an important psychological construct that plays a significant role in social interactions, mental health, and well-being. Despite the significance of empathy in psychological research and mental health, there is a lack of validated and concise measures available in Turkish. Objective: This study aims to evaluate the psychometric properties of the eight-item Empathy Quotient (EQ- 8) in Turkish university students, assessing its reliability, convergent validity, and factor structure. Therefore, we seek to determine its suitability for use in psychological and mental health research within Turkish-speaking populations. Methods: We collected the data from two groups. The data of the first group (N = 198) was used to test the factor structure of the EQ- 8 by randomly splitting the data into two halves. The first half was used for the exploratory factor analysis (EFA), and the second half was used for confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), while the second group (N = 47) was carried out to test the reliability of EQ- 8. Results: The results of the EFA and CFA yielded a one-factor solution for the EQ- 8. The internal consistency reliability was found to be good in both subsamples. Test–retest reliability was established as.86. As to the convergent validity, the scores on EQ- 8 were significantly positively related to the scores of the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire. Conclusions: These results provide support for the Turkish version of the EQ- 8 as a psychometrically sound instrument for measuring empathy. These results contribute to cross-cultural research and the evaluation of interventions targeting empathy.