Abstract

CHAVIRA TRUJILLO, Gabriel  and  CELIS DE LA ROSA, Alfredo. Psychometric Properties of the Cognitive and Affective Empathy Test in a Mexican Sample. Acta de investigación psicol [online]. 2022, vol.12, n.1, pp.62-75.  Epub Apr 24, 2023. ISSN 2007-4719.  https://doi.org/10.22201/fpsi.20074719e.2022.1.409.

Introduction: Assessing empathy is an increasing necessity within different research areas. Objective: The present study aims to analyse psychometric properties of the Cognitive and Affective Empathy Test (TECA) questionnaire that assesses empathy from a comprehensive perspective; being one of the few originally built in the Spanish language. Method: The reliability and construct validity were evaluated in 607 adults (137 men / 470 women) students from the Mexican population. Results: The results show adequate reliability of the instrument in general (α = .86). However, the exploratory and confirmatory factor analyzes suggest the need to review the items. Discussion: The incorporation of new methodologies such as robust factor analysis for ordinal type data (i.e. like Likert scales), with the incorporation of the random intercept, allows improving the fit of the models without altering the original factorial structure. Finally, metric invariance is not reached between the original Spanish sample and the Mexican one. Conclusions: The TECA can be applied in the Mexican population but a review of the construction of the items is suggested.

Keywords : Psychometry; Validation; Cognitive empathy; Affective empathy.