The Measure of Empathy in Early Childhood: Testing the Reliability, Validity, and Clinical Utility of Scores in Early Childhood

Empathy is a critical socioemotional skill that motivates prosocial behavior and supports the ability to respond to the emotions of others. Although accurate measurement of empathy in young children is critical for identifying and remediating empathy deficits, currently available parent-report measures of childhood empathy have several psychometric limitations. The present study tested the reliability, validity, and clinical utility of scores on the Measure of Empathy in Early Childhood (MEEC), a new multidimensional, parent-report empathy scale, in 4- to 7-year-old children. The psychometric properties of MEEC scores were assessed by examining their associations with criterion, construct, discriminant, and clinical validity measures. A sample of 129 parents of community and clinic-referred children (M-age = 5.62 years, SD = 1.01, 65.9% boys) completed the MEEC and other relevant parent-report questionnaires. Internal consistencies (a = .79-.93) of MEEC scores were good. Correlations between MEEC scores and parent-report measures, sex, and age robustly supported their validity in 4- to 7-year-old children. Logistic regression analyses demonstrated that MEEC scores significantly predicted membership into clinical subgroups characterized by empathy deficits. Linear regression analyses indicated that prosocial behavior and sympathy MEEC subscales, but not affective empathy, statistically predicted parent-reported callous-unemotional traits. Theoretical and clinical implications of these findings for developmental models of empathy and empathy-related disorders are discussed.