Department of Functional Sciences, Discipline of Public Health, Center for Translational Research and Systems Medicine, "Victor Babeș" University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 300041 Timișoara, Romania.
Department of Neuroscience, Discipline of Psychiatry, Center for Cognitive Research in Neuropsychiatric Pathology (NeuroPsy-Cog), "Victor Babeș" University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 300041 Timișoara, Romania.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Dec 7;18(24):12871. doi: 10.3390/ijerph182412871.
Medical professionals require adequate abilities to identify others' emotions and express personal emotions. We aimed to determine the validity and reliability of an empathy measuring tool in medical students for this study. We employed Spreng's Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ) as a starting point for this validation. The process was performed in several steps, including an English-Romanian-English translation and a focus group meeting to establish each question's degree of understandability and usability, with minor improvements of wording in each step. We checked internal and external consistency in a pilot group ( = 67). For construct and convergent validity, we used a sample of 649 students. The overall internal and external reliability performed well, with Cronbach's alpha = 0.727 and respective ICC = 0.776. The principal component analysis resulted in 3 components: prosocial helping behavior, inappropriate sensitivity, dismissive attitude. Component 1 includes positively worded questions, and components 2 and 3 include negatively worded questions. Women had significantly higher scores than men in convergent validity, but we did not highlight any differences for other demographic factors. The Romanian version of the TEQ is a reliable and valid tool to measure empathy among undergraduate medical students that may be further used in subsequent research.
医学专业人员需要具备识别他人情绪和表达个人情绪的能力。本研究旨在确定医学生同理心测量工具的有效性和可靠性。我们以斯普林的多伦多同理心问卷（TEQ）为起点进行验证。该过程分为几个步骤，包括英语-罗马尼亚语-英语翻译和焦点小组会议，以确定每个问题的理解程度和可用性，并在每个步骤中对措辞进行细微改进。我们在一个试点组（n=67）中检查了内部和外部一致性。对于结构和收敛效度，我们使用了 649 名学生的样本。整体内部和外部可靠性表现良好，克朗巴赫的 alpha 值为 0.727，相应的 ICC 为 0.776。主成分分析产生了 3 个成分：亲社会帮助行为、不适当的敏感性、轻视态度。第 1 个成分包含正面措辞的问题，第 2 和第 3 个成分包含负面措辞的问题。在收敛有效性方面，女性的得分明显高于男性，但我们没有强调其他人口统计学因素的差异。TEQ 的罗马尼亚语版本是一种可靠和有效的工具，可以衡量本科医学生的同理心，可在后续研究中进一步使用。
