Parents’ Judgements and Students’ Self-Judgements of Empathy : The structure of empathy and agreement of judgements based on the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI)

• A sample of 221 11th grade students and their parents were asked to complete the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; M. H. Davis, 1980), which is comprised of 4 subscales: empathic concern, perspective taking, fantasy, and personal distress; and a global-item measure containing 4 items, 1 for each subscale. The factorial structure that emerged in a previous study (C. Cliffordson, 2000) involving the students was tested on ratings provided by their parents. The results from the IRI scale were also compared to results from the global-item measure. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the structure of empathy and the agreement of self/other judgments. The results support the conclusions from the previous study that the concept of empathy can be considered to be identical to empathic concern, which also explains a great deal of perspective taking and fantasy. The agreement between the students' and their parents' judgments was substantial, and there are several reasons to believe that the interjudge agreement obtained is accurate.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Pedagogik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Pedagogy (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Empathy

Interpersonal Reactivity Index

IRI

self/other judgment

structural equation modeling

Education

Pedagogik

Pedagogik

Pedagogics

Psychology

Psykologi

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)