Dentistry Faculty, Universidad Andres Bello, Santiago, Chile.
Faculty of Social Sciences and communications, Universidad Santo Tomás, Concepción, Chile.
J Dent Educ. 2021 Mar;85(3):322-330. doi: 10.1002/jdd.12444. Epub 2020 Oct 9.
The objective of this study was to determine the psychometric properties of the 3-dimensional latent model of empathy on the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy instrument (version S), and to verify the existence of cutoff points capable of differentiating empathy measures classified as: "high," "medium," and "low" using data collected from observations of students from 11 dental faculties of 5 Central American and Caribbean countries (n = 3082) between 2015 and 2019.
This is an exploratory, "a posteriori," and non-experimental study. Factor structure and factor invariance by country and gender were analyzed. Hierarchical cluster analysis and bifactorial analysis were applied, and the data were normalized by cluster and by percentiles within them.
Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the original model was replicable and fit the data, while multigroup analysis allowed assuming an invariant factor structure by country and by gender. There is reliability in the measurement made by the scale and its dimensions.
The instrument has adequate psychometric properties, and cutoff values obtained allow people with lower or higher levels of empathy and its components to be classified. Therefore, these results solve the problem of comparing the scores and observed levels of empathy between dental schools within and between countries and between genders. Such comparisons were only possible since the original data of each study were made available for traditional statistical methods.
本研究旨在确定杰斐逊医生同理心量表（版本 S）三维潜在同理心模型的心理测量特性，并验证是否存在能够区分同理心测量值的截止点，这些测量值被分类为“高”、“中”和“低”，使用的数据来自 2015 年至 2019 年间来自 5 个中美洲和加勒比国家的 11 所牙科学院的学生（n=3082）的观察结果。
这是一项探索性的、“后验性”和非实验性的研究。分析了因子结构和国家与性别之间的因子不变性。应用层次聚类分析和双因子分析，并通过聚类和聚类内的百分比对数据进行归一化。
验证性因子分析表明，原始模型具有可复制性和对数据的拟合性，而多组分析允许假设国家和性别之间的因子结构不变。该量表及其维度的测量具有可靠性。
该工具具有良好的心理测量特性，获得的截止值允许对具有较低或较高同理心水平及其组成部分的人进行分类。因此，这些结果解决了在国家内部和国家之间以及性别之间比较牙科学院之间的分数和观察到的同理心水平的问题。只有在每个研究的原始数据可用于传统统计方法的情况下，才有可能进行这种比较。
