The EmpathiSEr: Development and Validation of Software Engineering Oriented Empathy Scales

2025-10-14

AI Summary

Software engineering (SE) lacks empathy measurement instruments tailored to its sociotechnical nature; generic scales suffer from contextual misalignment and dimensional mismatch, limiting their ability to capture developers’ cognitive, affective, and behavioral empathy toward peers or users. Method: We propose the first SE-specific conceptual framework of empathy and develop two domain-adapted, psychometrically rigorous scales: EmpathiSEr-P (measuring peer-directed empathy) and EmpathiSEr-U (measuring user-directed empathy). These were iteratively refined via expert review, cognitive interviews, and two-phase empirical surveys with industry practitioners, followed by comprehensive psychometric validation. Contribution/Results: Both scales demonstrate strong reliability, construct and criterion validity, and contextual sensitivity. This work fills a critical methodological gap in SE empathy research and provides empirically grounded, actionable measurement tools to support evidence-based interventions in team collaboration and user-centered design.

Technology Category

• Application Domains: Software Engineering
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Affective Computing
• Humans and AI: Emotional Intelligence

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Practical large-scale studies of user experience
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Web evaluation methodologies and metrics

Abstract

Empathy plays a critical role in software engineering (SE), influencing collaboration, communication, and user-centred design. Although SE research has increasingly recognised empathy as a key human aspect, there remains no validated instrument specifically designed to measure it within the unique socio-technical contexts of SE. Existing generic empathy scales, while well-established in psychology and healthcare, often rely on language, scenarios, and assumptions that are not meaningful or interpretable for software practitioners. These scales fail to account for the diverse, role-specific, and domain-bound expressions of empathy in SE, such as understanding a non-technical user's frustrations or another practitioner's technical constraints, which differ substantially from empathy in clinical or everyday contexts. To address this gap, we developed and validated two domain-specific empathy scales: EmpathiSEr-P, assessing empathy among practitioners, and EmpathiSEr-U, capturing practitioner empathy towards users. Grounded in a practitioner-informed conceptual framework, the scales encompass three dimensions of empathy: cognitive empathy, affective empathy, and empathic responses. We followed a rigorous, multi-phase methodology, including expert evaluation, cognitive interviews, and two practitioner surveys. The resulting instruments represent the first psychometrically validated empathy scales tailored to SE, offering researchers and practitioners a tool for assessing empathy and designing empathy-enhancing interventions in software teams and user interactions.

Problem

• Developing validated empathy scales for software engineering contexts
• Measuring role-specific empathy among practitioners and towards users
• Creating psychometric tools for assessing empathy in software teams

Innovation

• Developed two domain-specific empathy scales
• Validated scales through expert evaluation and surveys
• Tailored scales to software engineering contexts