Parents' Judgments and Students' Self-Judgments of Empathy

Abstract

Summary: A sample of 221 adolescents and their parents were asked to complete the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1980 ), which is comprised of four subscales: empathic concern, perspective taking, fantasy, and personal distress; and a global-item measure containing four items, one for each subscale. The factorial structure that emerged in a previous study ( 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.