The Basic Empathy Scale: Factor Structure and Validity in a Sample of Inpatient Adolescents

The Basic Empathy Scale (BES) is used widely to measure empathy in adolescents. Despite this wide use, there has been no examination of the measure's factor structure or its validity in an American or severe clinical sample. The present study addressed this gap by evaluating factor structure and construct validity in an inpatient sample of 652 adolescents (63% female). Results indicated that a bifactor model, with a general empathy factor and specific factors of affective and cognitive processes, provided the best fit of the data. After examining factor loadings for both the general and specific factors and calculating model-based reliability estimates, we conclude that the two specific factors represent measurement-specific error due to wording and the confounding construct of emotion recognition, respectively, and that BES total scores should be used in scoring and interpretation to capture the construct of empathy. BES total scores were positively associated with prosocial behavior, negatively associated with affective components of psychopathy (unemotionality, callousness, and uncaringness), and significantly higher for girls than for boys further bolstering the conclusion that the BES total score is a valid measure of empathy in adolescents with severe psychopathology. Public Significance Statement This study suggests that the Basic Empathy Scale (BES) can be used to assess empathy in adolescents with a wide range of psychopathology. However, while the conceptualization of empathy employed by the BES was intended to include separate affective and cognitive components, evidence from this study suggests that the total score, rather than susbscale scores, best capture the construct of empathy.