Development of a Swedish version of the Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy

The development and establishment of a Swedish translation of the Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy (SEE) was investigated in a sample of 788 participants. The SEE is a self-report instrument and is used to measure empathy directed toward people from ethnic cultural groups who are different from the respondent’s own ethnocultural group. Principal components factor analyses and confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) provided evidence for a four-factor structure. The factors were Acceptance of Cultural Differences, Communicative Ethnocultural Em-pathy, Ethnocultural Empathic Awareness, and Intellectual Ethnocultural Empathy. The factors were moderately intercorrelated, and additional correlational analyses showed convergent validity in high correlations between the four factors and the two subscales Empathic Concern and Perspective Taking of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI). Possible applications of this scale in a healthcare context are discussed.