Williams Brett, Sifris Adiva, Lynch Marty
Department of Community Emergency Health and Paramedic Practice, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences.
Faculty of Law, Monash University, Frankston, VIC, Australia.
Psychol Res Behav Manag. 2016 Jul 22;9:171-8. doi: 10.2147/PRBM.S108036. eCollection 2016.
A growing body of literature indicates that empathic behaviors are positively linked, in several ways, with the professional performance and mental well-being of lawyers and law students. It is therefore important to assess empathy levels among law students using psychometrically sound tools that are suitable for this cohort.
The 20-item Jefferson Scale of Empathy - Health Profession Students Version was adapted for a law context (eg, the word "health care" became "legal"), and the new Jefferson Scale of Empathy - Law Students (JSE-L-S) version was completed by 275 students at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Data were subjected to principal component analysis.
Four factors emerged from the principal component analysis ("understanding the client's perspective", "responding to clients' experiences and emotions", "responding to clients' cues and behaviors", and "standing in clients' shoes"), which accounted for 46.7% of the total variance. The reliability of the factors varied, but the overall 18-item JSE-L-S yielded a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.80. Several patterns among the item loadings were similar to those reported in studies using other versions of the Jefferson Scale of Empathy.
The JSE-L-S appears to be a reliable measure of empathy among undergraduate law students, which could help provide insights into law student welfare and future performance as legal practitioners. Additional evaluation of the JSE-L-S is required to disambiguate some of the minor findings explored. Adjustments may improve the psychometric properties.
越来越多的文献表明，共情行为在多个方面与律师和法律专业学生的职业表现及心理健康呈正相关。因此，使用适合该群体的心理测量学上可靠的工具来评估法律专业学生的共情水平很重要。
将20项的杰斐逊共情量表——健康专业学生版改编用于法律情境（例如，“医疗保健”一词变为“法律”），澳大利亚墨尔本莫纳什大学的275名学生完成了新的杰斐逊共情量表——法律专业学生版（JSE-L-S）。对数据进行主成分分析。
主成分分析得出四个因素（“理解客户的观点”“回应客户的经历和情绪”“回应客户的线索和行为”以及“设身处地为客户着想”），它们占总方差的46.7%。各因素的信度有所不同，但18项的JSE-L-S总体得出的克朗巴哈α系数为0.80。项目载荷中的几种模式与使用杰斐逊共情量表其他版本的研究报告中的模式相似。
JSE-L-S似乎是本科法律专业学生共情的可靠测量工具，这有助于深入了解法律专业学生的福利以及他们未来作为法律从业者的表现。需要对JSE-L-S进行进一步评估，以澄清所探讨的一些次要发现。调整可能会改善心理测量特性。
