Validity Studies of the Online Empathy Questionnaire

The present study’s objective was to examine the validity of the Online Empathy Questionnaire (QoE – initials in Portuguese), whose purpose is to evaluate empathy via three factors: emotional, cognitive and compassionate empathy. The study enjoyed the participation of 4801 individuals, 56.8% of whom were females, with a mean age of 27.73 years (SD = 7.89). The participants answered the QoE fi rst; and the remaining 11 instruments (e.g., quality of life, personality and intelligence), on a rotating basis. The QoE scores exhibited strong positive correlations with measures of agreeableness and strong negative correlations with the Dark Triad and social isolation; moderate correlations with measures of emotional dysregulation (positively for emotional empathy and negatively for the others), quality of life and life satisfaction (positively); and practically null correlations with measures of intelligence. Reliability rates were moderate to good, with test-retest stability. Women exhibited means that were moderately higher than those of men. The results we obtained corroborated theoretical expectations. We believe the results exhibit construct, criterion and discriminant validity evidence for the QoE.