Validity and reliability of the Arabic version of the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ) among Saudi medical students: a cross-sectional study

ABSTRACT

The studys objective was to assess the validity and reliability of the Arabic version of the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ) in medical university students in Saudi Arabia. This research employed a cross-sectional design. The TEQ was translated into Arabic by two bilingual translators using forward and back translation methods. A pilot study was performed, and the final survey data was analyzed using SPSS. The study included 211 participants, primarily female (80.6%), with five different age groups, of which 21–22 year-olds comprised 34.6%. The Arabic version of the TEQ was found to be valid (p < .005) except for item 11 (p = .427). The Cronbach coefficient was .677. There were no significant differences between the TEQ scores and the sociodemographic characters. Medical students in our study exhibited an average degree of empathy. Further multicenter research is recommended to generalize the findings.

KEYWORDS:

• Empathy
• Medical student
• Sympathy
• Validation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).