Reliability and validity of the Empathy Quotient: The Chinese version

The purpose of this study is to develop a Chinese version of Empathy Quotient (Baron-Cohen, 2004). The original version of Empathy Quotient (EQ) is a self-report questionnaire including cognitive and affective aspects of empathy. We translated the Empathy Quotient into Chinese and asked 360 subjects to fill up the questionnaire. The results of confirmatory factor analyses showed that the factor loading does not fit exactly with the three-factor structure proposed by Lawrence et al. (2004). But the exploratory factor analysis revealed an alternative three-factor structure. Compared with other language versions of the Empathy Quotient, factor 1, named cognitive empathy, is similar to the other versions. This result indicates that the cognitive empathy is culturally universal. In addition, the analysis showed less number of items for factor 3 compared to other versions. The findings suggest to reconsider the cultural differences probed by the Empathy Quotient questionnaire.