Development of the Empathy Ability Questionnaire in Intimate Relationships among College Students

Empathy ability is the ability to share and understand others' feelings and experiences. It is how a person feels when they watch or imagine how someone else feels. Close relationships are relationships where people depend on each other a lot. They include many kinds, such as romantic relationships, marriage, family ties, classmate relationships and friendships. Empathy ability is a key thing in close relationships. We combined empathy ability with close relationships. We made a questionnaire called "Empathy Ability in Close Relationships Questionnaire". We wanted to find out if college students' empathy ability is different when they face different close relationships. We collected study data in three ways: looking at many papers, asking experts to judge and discuss, and giving out the questionnaire. We used some statistical methods, like exploratory factor analysis, independent - samples t - test and repeated measures analysis of variance. We also used the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire to test the effect. We wanted to know how good our questionnaire was and test its reliability and validity. Finally, we made the "College Students' Empathy Ability in Close Relationships Questionnaire". It has 22 questions. It includes 3 parts: family empathy, friend empathy and lover empathy. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient is 0.896. The split - half reliability is 0.918. The results show two things. First, girls' empathy ability is much stronger than boys'. Second, empathy ability is very different in the three parts: family, friendship and love. College students have the highest empathy ability in friendship. They have the lowest empathy ability in family relationships. In short, this questionnaire has good reliability and validity. It meets the standards of psychometrics. It can be used as a tool to measure college students' empathy ability in close relationships.