The Toronto Empathy Questionnaire: Scale Development and Initial Validation of a Factor-Analytic Solution to Multiple Empathy Measures

TLDR

The Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ) conceptualizes empathy primarily as an emotional process. The study aimed to create a concise empathy assessment tool by factor‑analyzing multiple self‑report measures to identify a common factor. The authors performed factor analysis on several self‑report empathy scales and constructed a brief questionnaire capturing the common factor. The TEQ demonstrated strong convergent validity with behavioral and self‑report empathy measures, a negative correlation with autism symptomatology, high internal consistency, excellent test‑retest reliability, and proved to be a brief, reliable, valid instrument.

Abstract

To formulate a parsimonious tool to assess empathy, we used factor analysis on a combination of self-report measures to examine consensus and developed a brief self-report measure of this common factor. The Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ) represents empathy as a primarily emotional process. In 3 studies, the TEQ demonstrated strong convergent validity, correlating positively with behavioral measures of social decoding, self-report measures of empathy, and negatively with a measure of Autism symptomatology. Moreover, it exhibited good internal consistency and high test–retest reliability. The TEQ is a brief, reliable, and valid instrument for the assessment of empathy.