Investigation on the Rationality of the Extant Ways of Scoring the Interpersonal Reactivity Index Based on Confirmatory Factor Analysis

Frontiers in Psychology

article

Yang Wang¹  Yun Li²  Wanting Xiao³  Yuanshu Fu⁴  Jing Jie⁵ 

[1] School of Public Administration, Guangdong University of Finance;School of Psychology, South China Normal University;Guangzhou Rehabilitation and Research Center for Children with Autism, Guangzhou Cana School;School of Education, Zhaoqing University;Center for Mental Health Education, Hainan University

关键词: empathy;    Interpersonal Reactivity Index;    scoring approaches;    confirmatory factor analysis;    model-based reliability;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01086

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

As the most frequently used tool for measuring empathy, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) is often scored by researchers arbitrarily and casually. Many commonly used IRI scoring approaches and their corresponding measurement models are unverified, which may make the conclusions of subsequent variable relation studies controversial and even misleading. We make the first effort to summarize these measurement models and to evaluate rationality of the common scoring methods of the IRI by confirmatory factor analysis, focusing on model fitting, factor loading, and model-based reliability simultaneously. The results show that most of these models do not fit well, indicating that the scoring approaches of the IRI corresponding to these models may be problematic. Relatively speaking, better scoring approaches of the IRI include summing empathic concern (EC) and perspective taking (PT) as the total score of the IRI and reporting the score of PT as cognitive empathy.

【 授权许可】

CC BY