How Common Empathy Questionnaires Define and Operationalise Empathy

This study aims to investigate how commonly-used empathy questionnaires define, operationalise and measure empathy. The findings will inform discussions on the validity of the most commonly-used empathy questionnaires, providing empirical groundwork for developing improved, theoretically aligned, and culturally reflexive empathy questionnaires. This study uses a within-subjects mixed-methods design. First, a systematic search of the Web of Science was carried out to determine the most commonly-used open-access empathy questionnaires. Then, a systematic review was conducted to further investigate the actual-use context surrounding those questionnaires. Next, a Reflexive Thematic Analysis was carried out (and is still currently ongoing) on the wording of the statements within each questionnaire to determine theme clusters. These themes will be used to inform the interpretation of the Exploratory Factor Analysis conducted on the survey data. Specifically, after pre-processing and exclusions, the raw survey data will be analysed and visualisations produced using pre-registered R Markdown scripts. The Demographics Form data will be analysed to understand the diversity of the survey sample, and to produce descriptive summary statistics. After checking assumptions, Exploratory Factor Analysis will be conducted on the composite scores from the empathy questionnaires. Conclusions will be drawn on how empathy is defined and measured, to answer the research aims. Finally, the findings of this study may be published, and presented to the public at conferences.