Construção e Evidências de Validade da Escala Multidimensional de Empatia para Crianças

The aims of this work were to construct the Multidimensional Empathy Scale for Children (MESC) and to assess validity indicators for this instrument. A team of researchers developed 69 items to evaluate five dimensions of empathy. After testing the semantic and content validity, a version of the MESC with 30 items was applied with 373 children (ages between 7 and 12 years; M=10.07 ± 1.42). Another scale for evaluation of empathy and one for measuring aggression were used. Exploratory Factor Analysis suggested a three factor solution with 24 items, which explained 48.25% of the variance. Indicators of the convergent and divergent validity of the MESC, and differences related to sex and age were observed. The results indicate that the MESC is appropriate for measuring different components of empathy in children, from a multidimensional perspective, which represents an advantage for this scale, compared to other instruments available in Brazil.