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The Toronto Empathy Questionnaire

Author of Tool:
Spreng, R. N., McKinnon, M. C., Mar, R. A., & Levine, B.

Key references:
Spreng, R. N., McKinnon, M. C., Mar, R. A., & Levine, B. (2009). The toronto empathy questionnaire:
Scale development and initial validation of a factor-analytic solution to multiple empathy measures.
Journal of Personality Assessment, 91, 62-71.

Primary use / Purpose:

This questionnaire was designed as a brief measure of empathy.

Background:
This questionnaire consists of 16 questions, each rated on a five point scale from 'never' to 'often'. It was
developed by reviewing other available empathy instruments, determining what these instruments had in
common, and deriving a single factor that became the basis of the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire
(TEQ). The TEQ conceptualises empathy as a primarily emotional process. The instrument has been
shown to be positively correlated with measures of social decoding, other empathy measures, and to be
negatively correlated with measures of autism symptomatology.

Psychometrics:
The questionnaire has been shown to have high internal consistency, construct validity, and testretest
reliability (Spreng et al., 2009).

Keywords:
Anxiety
Family

Files:
teq.doc

Other Information:
Scoring: Item responses are scored according to the following scale for positively worded Items 1, 3, 5, 6,
8, 9, 13, 16. Never = 0; Rarely = 1; Sometimes = 2; Often = 3; Always = 4. The following negatively
worded items are reverse scored: 2, 4, 7, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15. Scores are summed to derive total for the
Toronto Empathy Questionnaire
Submitter

Digital Object Identifier (DOI):

http://dx.doi.org/10.13072/midss.94
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This Project is Funded by:

The Irish Social Sciences Platform (ISSP), which is funded under the Programme for Research in Third
Level Institutions (Cycle 4), administered by the HEA and co-funded under the European Regional
Development Fund (ERDF).

Contact MIDSS:
Whitaker Institute for Innovation and Societal Change
Cairnes Building
National University of Ireland, Galway
Galway
Ireland
Phone = 091 492 817
Email info@midss.ie

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