E-psychologie (Jul 2017)
The Czech version of Emotional Empathy Scale (EES-R)
Abstract
The main goal of the study is to introduce the Czech version of Emotional Empathy Scale (EES-R) and its psychometric characteristics. The scale, developed from the Emotional Empathy Scale (EES) by Caruso and Mayer (1998), is devoted to self-report assessment in the frame of multidimensional emotional empathy construct. Partial objectives of this study focus on the factor structure, reliability and validity of the scale with regard to verification of application possibilities. One of the objectives is aimed at a description of the subscales of EES-R, especially for the research use. The data were obtained on the sample of 317 respondents aged from 19 to 62 years, namely 44.2 % men and 55.8 % women. Besides the Czech translation of EES and the Czech version of the scale (EES-R), 3 subscales from the Business-focused Inventory of Personality (BIP) were used for the verification of the parallel validity. The exploratory factor analysis led to the three-factor solution. Three resulted subscales of the scale, labelled as Compassion – solidarity, Emotional feeling and Positive sharing, represented individual factors and showed an adequate prop in both data and theory. The confirmatory factor analysis conducted with EES-R confirmed a corresponding match between the model and data. The internal consistency of subscales items showed a reliability ranging from 0.72 to 0.87, with the value of 0.89 for the whole scale. Satisfactory values of test-retest reliability were obtained for the subscales (0.69 to 0.83) and the whole scale (.79) after three months. Results of the parallel validity for the emotional empathy construct measured by EES-R correspond with previous research findings. In case of growing emotional empathy also sensitivity and sociability were slightly growing. On the contrary, the emotional stability was slightly decreasing. The characteristics of EES-R were described on our sample with respect to gender and age. This method demonstrated good psychometric properties for the research. The main limitation of the study is in the research sample. Despite of balanced demographical variables, the range of the whole sample is quite small. The data were collected only on common population. Also there are not enough proofs of validity in case of EES-R. (Fulltext in Czech)
