Strengthening School Connectedness to Increase Student Success
Category: Student Well-Being and Mental Health
The Basic Empathy Scale (BES) was based specifically on the definition of empathy put forth by Cohen and Strayer (1996) ‘‘as the understanding and sharing in another’s emotional state or context’’. Items within the Basic Empathy Scale were created based on the conceptualization of affective and cognitive empathy. Items for the BES were also based on four of the five ‘basic emotions’ (fear, sadness, anger, happiness). Each scale item asks participants to respond on a Likert scale from 1 representing ‘strongly disagree’ to 5 representing ‘strongly agree’, depending on the degree to which the item described them.
Content
Grades
4th Grade,
5th Grade,
6th Grade,
7th Grade,
8th Grade,
9th Grade,
10th Grade,
11th Grade,
12th Grade,
Post secondary
Languages
English
Spanish
Chinese
Other
Other Language/s
Italian, French, German, Portuguese
Respondent
Student
Administration Information
Length
40 items
Qualifications
Not indicated
Administration
Paper
Access and Use
Contact
Corresponding Author: Darrick Jolliffe
Professor, Head of School of Law & Criminology, University of Greenwich
BSc, MPhil, PhD
Email: d.jolliffe@gre.ac.uk
Open Access
No
Use in Research
Stavrinides, P., Georgiou, S., & Theofanous, V. (2010). Bullying and empathy: a short‐term longitudinal investigation. Educational Psychology, 30(7), 793-802. https://doi.org/10.1080/01443410.2010.506004
Topcu, Ç., & Erdur-Baker, Ö. (2012). Affective and cognitive empathy as mediators of gender differences in cyber and traditional bullying. School Psychology International, 33(5), 550-561. https://doi.org/10.1177/0143034312446882
Triffaux, J. M., Tisseron, S., & Nasello, J. A. (2019). Decline of empathy among medical students: Dehumanization or useful coping process?. L'Encéphale, 45(1), 3-8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.encep.2018.05.003
Psychometrics
Scoring
Manual scoring
Referencing
Norm-referenced
Psychometric References
D’Ambrosio, F., Olivier, M., Didon, D., & Besche, C. (2009). The basic empathy scale: A French validation of a measure of empathy in youth. Personality and Individual Differences, 46(2), 160-165. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2008.09.020
Geng, Y., Xia, D., & Qin, B. (2012). The Basic Empathy Scale: A Chinese validation of a measure of empathy in adolescents. Child Psychiatry & Human Development, 43(4), 499-510. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-011-0278-6
Jolliffe, D., & Farrington, D. P. (2006). Development and validation of the Basic Empathy Scale. Journal of Adolescence, 29(4), 589-611. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2005.08.010
Sánchez-Pérez, N., Fuentes, L. J., Jolliffe, D., & González-Salinas, C. (2014). Assessing children’s empathy through a Spanish adaptation of the Basic Empathy Scale: parent’s and child’s report forms. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1438. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01438
Item Type
Likert
