The EmpathiSEr: Development and Validation of Software Engineering Oriented Empathy Scales
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arXiv
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| Auteurs principaux: | , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Publié: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866909845940076544 |
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| author | Gunatilake, Hashini Grundy, John Hoda, Rashina Mueller, Ingo |
| author_facet | Gunatilake, Hashini Grundy, John Hoda, Rashina Mueller, Ingo |
| contents | 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. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_12546 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | The EmpathiSEr: Development and Validation of Software Engineering Oriented Empathy Scales Gunatilake, Hashini Grundy, John Hoda, Rashina Mueller, Ingo Software Engineering 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. |
| title | The EmpathiSEr: Development and Validation of Software Engineering Oriented Empathy Scales |
| topic | Software Engineering |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.12546 |