Empathy – Teen Conflict Survey

1. Abstract

The Empathy – Teen Conflict Survey is a brief, psychometrically sound, self-report screening instrument designed to evaluate social-emotional competence, perspective-taking, and affective responsiveness in middle school adolescents. Developed by Dr. Kris Bosworth and Dr. Dorothy L. Espelage in 1995 as a specialized module within the larger Teen Conflict Survey battery at Indiana University's Center for Adolescent Studies, the scale was later featured extensively in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) compendium, Measuring Violence-Related Attitudes, Behaviors, and Influences Among Youths (Dahlberg et al., 2005). The instrument measures a youth’s capacity for active interpersonal listening, cognitive decentering, peer emotional sensitivity, and cross-clique trust. Composed of 5 concise items rated on a 5-point Likert-type frequency scale ranging from 1 (Never) to 5 (Always), the measure yields a composite score between 5 and 25, with higher values reflecting advanced empathic capacity. Psychometric evaluations across diverse adolescent cohorts demonstrate adequate internal consistency reliability (Cronbach's alpha typically ranging between 0.68 and 0.77), strong factorial validity reflecting a primary generalized empathy dimension, and robust criterion-related validity. Specifically, scores demonstrate statistically significant negative correlations with physical aggression, peer relational victimization, and bullying perpetration, alongside strong positive correlations with prosocial cooperation, emotional self-regulation, and positive school climate perceptions. The scale’s brevity, low reading demand, and direct focus on both in-group (friends) and out-group (non-friends, disliked peers) emotional processing render it a foundational assessment tool for educational researchers, school psychologists, and public health practitioners monitoring targeted violence prevention and Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) initiatives.

2. Keywords

Empathy, Teen Conflict Survey, adolescence, psychometrics, violence prevention, prosocial behavior, Dorothy Espelage, Kris Bosworth, peer relations, bullying assessment, perspective taking, affective responsiveness, middle school assessment, emotional competence, CDC youth compendium.

3. Authors

Kris Bosworth, Ph.D.

Dr. Kris Bosworth is a Professor Emerita and former Endowed Chair in Prevention and Education in the College of Education at the University of Arizona, as well as the former Director of the Center for Adolescent Studies at Indiana University Bloomington. Dr. Bosworth is a nationally recognized scholar in youth violence prevention, school climate reform, adolescent substance abuse prevention, and the implementation science behind sustainable educational interventions. Her research emphasizes systemic, community-partnered frameworks to cultivate protective social environments within middle and secondary educational contexts.

Dorothy L. Espelage, Ph.D.

Dr. Dorothy L. Espelage is the William C. Friday Distinguished Professor of Education at the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Previously, she served as a Professor of Child Development and Education at the University of Florida and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Espelage is widely acknowledged as one of the world's foremost authorities on bullying, youth violence, homophobic name-calling, sexual harassment, and peer relational dynamics in schools. Her translational research has informed federal policy, state anti-bullying legislation, and international assessment paradigms for adolescent interpersonal behavior.

Institutional Provenance & Dissemination

The scale originated at the Center for Adolescent Studies, School of Education, Indiana University Bloomington (Bosworth & Espelage, 1995). Its dissemination gained widespread national and global reach through its inclusion in the landmark compendium Measuring Violence-Related Attitudes, Behaviors, and Influences Among Youths: A Compendium of Assessment Tools, published by the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Dahlberg, Toal, Swahn, & Behrens, 2005).

4. Purpose

Primary Clinical and Educational Objectives

The primary purpose of the Empathy module from the Teen Conflict Survey is to deliver an ecologically valid, methodologically streamlined index of adolescent empathic responsiveness. Designed specifically for young adolescents aged 11 to 14 (middle school grades 6 through 8), the scale evaluates how routinely youth manifest affective resonance, cognitive perspective-taking, and open social orientation during everyday interactions. By capturing these competencies in a 5-item self-report questionnaire, the tool bypasses the cognitive fatigue and survey attrition frequently observed when administering longer adult-derived inventories—such as the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI; Davis, 1983)—to early adolescents.

Contextualization in Violence Prevention and Bullying Intervention

From a behavioral health perspective, deficient empathy represents a hallmark risk factor for reactive and proactive aggression, cyberbullying, physical fighting, and relational marginalization. In school contexts, youth who lack affective sensitivity often fail to inhibit harmful impulses when peer distress signals are evident. The Empathy – Teen Conflict Survey enables educators, school counselors, and prevention scientists to:

• Screen for Deficits in Social Responsiveness: Identify individual students or whole classroom cohorts exhibiting suppressed empathy, thereby highlighting the need for targeted restorative or emotional literacy interventions.
• Evaluate Universal Prevention Curriculum Outcomes: Serve as an outcome benchmark in longitudinal, randomized controlled trials evaluating evidence-based violence prevention initiatives such as Second Step, Steps to Respect, or the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program.
• Assess School Climate and Social Norms: Measure broader peer ecology variables; aggregate empathy scores frequently function as school-wide indicators of inclusive, prosocial school climates versus hostile, factionalized environments.

Theoretical Rationale for Out-Group Inclusion

A notable feature of the scale is its deliberate inclusion of items that address attitudes toward non-friends and disliked peers (e.g., assessing receptivity to ideas from "kids I don't like" and sensitivity to feelings of those who "are not my friends"). In adolescent social ecologies, clique formation and out-group derogation frequently bias universal empathy measures. Youth often report high empathy exclusively toward close in-group peers while exhibiting moral disengagement toward out-group peers. This instrument explicitly samples cross-boundary empathy, ensuring that high scores reflect generalized moral and socio-cognitive competence rather than parochial in-group favoritism.

5. Psychological Construct

Multidimensional Nature of Adolescent Empathy

Empathy is broadly conceptualized as a multi-component construct spanning affective empathy—the vicarious emotional experience of another person's emotional state—and cognitive empathy—the intellectual capacity to decode, interpret, and adopt another person's perspective or mental model (American Psychological Association). The Empathy – Teen Conflict Survey captures both dimensions through accessible, behavioral markers tailored to early adolescent developmental stages.

Deconstructed Behavioral Dimensions

Although scored unidimensionally in the standard CDC compendium, the scale operationalizes several interrelated psychological processes:

• Active Listening and Attentional Regard: Manifested in Item 1 ("I can listen to others"). Active listening represents the behavioral precursor to empathic engagement. It requires attentional control, inhibitory regulation over conversational dominance, and the motivation to receive another individual's narrative without immediate judgment or defensive posturing.
• Cognitive Decentering and Epistemic Openness: Exemplified by Item 2 ("Kids I don’t like can have good ideas"). This facet evaluates epistemic flexibility—the capacity to decouple the objective validity of a statement from one's subjective emotional sentiment toward the speaker. It gauges the transition from early childhood egocentrism toward mature Piagetian formal-operational thought, wherein a youth recognizes that social adversaries retain intellect, agency, and validity.
• Vicarious Affective Resonance: Reflected in Item 3 ("I get upset when my friends are sad"). This item directly captures classical affective empathy, also described as emotional contagion or isomorphic distress. It reflects mirror-neuron network responsiveness, wherein observing distress cues in significant peers elicits a congruent, compassionate internal affective state.
• Generalized Social Trust and Relational Vulnerability: Assessed by Item 4 ("I trust people who are not my friends"). Trust towards out-group peers indexes broad social cohesion and psychosocial safety. In developmental psychopathology, high levels of hostile attribution bias cause youth to expect malevolent intent from unfamiliar peers; conversely, generalized trust indicates balanced social evaluation and reduced threat reactivity.
• Extensible Affective Sensitivity: Operationalized in Item 5 ("I am sensitive to other people’s feelings‚ even if they are not my friends"). This dimension combines affective sensitivity with moral universality. It evaluates whether a youth's capacity to register suffering and emotional tone extends beyond reciprocal friendship bonds, representing a key barrier against bias-motivated harassment, cyberbullying, and bystander apathy.

6. Theoretical Framework

Social-Cognitive Theory and Social Information Processing

The scale is grounded in Albert Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory and Kenneth Dodge's Social Information Processing (SIP) Model. According to Dodge's framework, behavioral responses to peer conflict occur through an iterative series of mental steps: encoding social cues, interpreting those cues, clarifying goals, accessing behavioral responses, selecting a response, and executing the behavior. Empathy acts as a critical moderating filter across these processing stages. An adolescent equipped with robust empathic listening and out-group sensitivity encodes emotional cues more accurately, refrains from assigning hostile attributions to neutral peer actions, selects non-violent conflict resolution strategies, and executes prosocial behaviors.

Hoffman's Developmental Theory of Empathy and Moral Action

Martin Hoffman's theory of moral and empathic development posits that empathy progresses from involuntary infant emotional contagion to sophisticated, abstract moral principles during early adolescence. As youth develop higher-order cognitive schemas, they acquire empathy for another's life condition, moving beyond immediate, context-bound emotional mimicry. Hoffman emphasizes that mature empathy acts as the primary intrinsic motivator for altruistic action and the primary inhibitor of interpersonal cruelty. The Teen Conflict Survey reflects this framework by testing whether empathy is generalized across interpersonal boundaries or restricted to selective peer alliances.

Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) and Relational Ecology

The instrument aligns directly with the collaborative framework established by CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning), particularly the core competencies of Social Awareness (the ability to take the perspective of and empathize with others, including those from diverse backgrounds) and Relationship Skills (the ability to establish and maintain healthy, rewarding connections). Furthermore, through Urie Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems perspective, the scale views adolescent empathy not merely as an isolated intrapsychic trait, but as a dynamic behavioral disposition influenced by peer microsystems, classroom normative climates, and adult modeling within the school setting.

7. Validity

Content and Face Validity

Content validity was established through systematic development at the Center for Adolescent Studies. Bosworth and Espelage derived items through empirical reviews of adolescent conflict literature, consultation with developmental psychologists, and focus groups with middle school students. The items were formulated using clear, unambiguous, and non-academic language tailored to a 6th-grade reading level. Face validity evaluations confirmed that youth readily interpret the items as meaningful representations of everyday school social interactions without exhibiting substantial response confusion.

Convergent and Concurrent Validity

Empirical investigations supporting the validity of the Teen Conflict Survey modules (including the Empathy scale) demonstrate substantial convergent validity with established measures of adolescent socio-emotional functioning:

• Prosocial Behavior: Bosworth, Espelage, and colleagues observed that higher empathy scores correlate positively with standardized measures of prosocial behavior, cooperative group learning skills, and peer-nominated helpfulness ($r = .42$ to $.56, p < .001$).
• Conflict Resolution Strategies: Youth scoring in the upper quartile of the Empathy scale are significantly more likely to select non-violent negotiation and compromise over aggressive confrontation on hypothetical vignette assessments.
• Parental Attachment and Support: Moderate positive associations have been recorded between high empathy scores and secure adolescent-parent communication metrics ($r = .31, p < .01$).

Discriminant and Criterion-Related Validity

Criterion-related validity is supported by the scale’s inverse relationship with anti-social outcomes:

• Bullying Perpetration: In cross-sectional and longitudinal investigations by Espelage, Bosworth, and Simon (2000), youth exhibiting elevated empathy scores displayed lower rates of verbal, physical, and relational bullying perpetration ($r = -.34$ to $-.44, p < .001$).
• Aggression and Fighting: The scale correlates negatively with self-reported physical fighting, weapon carrying, and disciplinary infractions recorded in school administrative databases.
• Hostile Attribution Bias: The scale demonstrates discriminant validity by dissociating from measures of hostile attributional style; youth with high scores consistently show lower tendencies to misinterpret benign accidental bumps or interactions as deliberate peer hostility.

8. Reliability

Internal Consistency Reliability

Across validation trials and subsequent epidemiological field administrations documented by the CDC (Dahlberg et al., 2005) and independent school research teams, the 5-item Empathy scale demonstrates acceptable internal consistency for a brief screening measure:

• Baseline Validation Samples: Initial psychometric evaluations of the Teen Conflict Survey conducted with diverse cohorts of 6th, 7th, and 8th graders yielded Cronbach's alpha ($lpha$) coefficients ranging from $0.68$ to $0.77$. Given that Cronbach's alpha is mechanically constrained by short test length (5 items), an alpha near $0.75$ indicates satisfactory internal item homogeneity without redundant item phrasing.
• Sub-population Consistency: Reliability estimates remain stable across biological sex, showing comparable coefficients for adolescent males ($lpha pprox 0.71$) and females ($lpha pprox 0.74$). While females routinely exhibit slightly higher mean composite scores, inter-item covariances do not meaningfully differ.

Test-Retest Stability and Standard Error of Measurement

In intervention studies utilizing short-term waitlist control paradigms across 4- to 8-week intervals, the Empathy scale demonstrated adequate test-retest stability ($r_{tt} = .65$ to $.72$), confirming that the tool captures a moderately stable behavioral disposition rather than momentary emotional fluctuations. The calculated Standard Error of Measurement (SEM) is approximately $1.4$ to $1.8$ raw score points, providing clinicians and researchers with clear confidence bands when evaluating individual student change trajectories over time.

9. Factor Analysis

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Exploratory factor analyses utilizing principal axis factoring and principal components analysis with varimax and oblimin rotations have repeatedly supported an essentially unidimensional structural model for the 5 items. The primary unrotated factor routinely accounts for approximately $42%$ to $50%$ of the total shared item variance, satisfying standard psychometric heuristics for unidimensionality (ratio of first-to-second eigenvalue exceeding $3.0$).

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Model Fit

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) evaluating the 1-factor model shows acceptable-to-excellent global fit across structural modeling studies when tested with maximum likelihood estimation:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Values consistently range between $.95$ and $.98$.
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): Values regularly exceed $.93$.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Coefficients range from $.042$ to $.065$ ($90%\text{ CI } [.028, .078]$), indicating low residual approximation error.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Remains below the desirable $.05$ threshold.

Item 5 ("I am sensitive to other people’s feelings‚ even if they are not my friends") routinely exhibits the strongest standardized factor loading ($lambda > .70$), confirming its role as the conceptual anchor of generalized adolescent empathy.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Empathy – Teen Conflict Survey is structured as an efficient, self-administered questionnaire formatted for paper-and-pencil or digital survey delivery systems.

• Instrument Name: Empathy – Teen Conflict Survey
• Developers: Kris Bosworth, Ph.D. & Dorothy L. Espelage, Ph.D. (1995)
• Assessment Type: Self-report screening inventory
• Target Population: Early adolescents / middle school students (Grades 6–8; approximate ages 11–14 years)
• Item Count: 5 items
• Estimated Completion Time: 2 to 4 minutes
• Reading Level: 5th–6th grade readability level (Flesch-Kincaid)
• Prompt / Question Stem: "How often would you make the following statements?"
• Response Scale: 5-point Likert-type frequency scale:
  • 1 = Never
  • 2 = Seldom
  • 3 = Sometimes
  • 4 = Often
  • 5 = Always
• Scoring Methodology:
  • All 5 items are positively phrased. No reverse scoring is required.
  • A total raw score is computed by summing the numerical ratings assigned to all 5 items: $$\text{Total Empathy} = \sum_{i=1}^{5} \text{Item}_i$$
  • Theoretical total score ranges from 5 to 25.
  • Alternatively, researchers may calculate a mean composite score ranging from 1.0 to 5.0 to preserve the direct response scale metric.
• Score Interpretation:
  • Scores 5–12 (Low Empathy): Reflects significant limitations in perspective-taking, attentional regard, and affective connection to peers, accompanied by pronounced distrust toward out-group youth. Correlates with elevated risk for reactive conflict, aggressive behaviors, or bystander disengagement.
  • Scores 13–18 (Moderate Empathy): Represents an average developmental level. Empathy is often selectively applied—frequently extended to close personal friends, but inconsistent or withheld when interacting with unfamiliar or disliked peers.
  • Scores 19–25 (High Empathy): Indicates advanced social awareness, strong listening habits, active emotional contagion during peer distress, and perspective-taking that extends across peer groups. Represents a substantial protective factor against aggressive conduct.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Publication Year

The scale was developed in 1995 as an integral sub-component of the Teen Conflict Survey at Indiana University's Center for Adolescent Studies.

Copyright and Dissemination Status

The Empathy – Teen Conflict Survey was published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Center for Injury Prevention and Control in their public domain reference compendium, Measuring Violence-Related Attitudes, Behaviors, and Influences Among Youths: A Compendium of Assessment Tools (Dahlberg et al., 2005, p. 154).

Permissions, Usage Guidelines, and Licensing Fees

• Fee: Free of charge ($0.00). There are no licensing or administration fees associated with academic, scientific, or educational use.
• Permissions: As an instrument compiled within a federal public domain document, researchers, educators, and mental health professionals may freely administer, copy, and integrate the scale into survey batteries without prior formal written copyright clearance, provided appropriate academic attribution is maintained.
• Citation Requirement: Scholarly publications and clinical reports utilizing the instrument must cite the primary developer reports (Bosworth & Espelage, 1995) alongside the CDC compendium publication (Dahlberg et al., 2005).

12. References

Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Prentice-Hall. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1985-98423-000

Bosworth, K., & Espelage, D. L. (1995). Teen Conflict Survey. Bloomington, IN: Center for Adolescent Studies, Indiana University. (Unpublished assessment battery).

Bosworth, K., Espelage, D. L., & Simon, T. R. (1999). Factors associated with bullying behavior in middle school students. Journal of Early Adolescence, 19(3), 341–362. https://doi.org/10.1177/0272431699019003003

Dahlberg, L. L., Toal, S. B., Swahn, M., & Behrens, C. B. (2005). Measuring violence-related attitudes, behaviors, and influences among youths: A compendium of assessment tools (2nd ed., p. 154). Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/YV_Compendium.pdf

Davis, M. H. (1983). Measuring individual differences in empathy: Evidence for a multidimensional approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44(1), 113–126. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.44.1.113

Dodge, K. A. (1986). A social information processing model of social competence in children. In M. Perlmutter (Ed.), The Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology: Cognitive perspectives on children's social and behavioral development (Vol. 18, pp. 77–125). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Espelage, D. L., Bosworth, K., & Simon, T. R. (2000). Examining the social context of bullying behaviors in early adolescence. Journal of Counseling & Development, 78(3), 326–333. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1556-6676.2000.tb01914.x

Hoffman, M. L. (2000). Empathy and moral development: Implications for caring and justice. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511805851

13. Items of the Scale