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Author Ben Baldwin-Anyasodo, David Large, Gary Burnett, Robert Houghton |
| Abstract The Empathy Evaluation Questionnaire (EEQ) is a questionnaire-based instrument designed to evaluate perceived empathic interaction in speech-based human-machine interfaces. The paper presents the conceptual grounding, development, and empirical evaluation of the EEQ, including evidence of internal consistency, construct validity, and latent structure. Rather than treating empathy as a stable psychological trait or an intrinsic system property, the EEQ is positioned as a measure of how empathic qualities are recognised by users during interaction. Results from a large-scale online survey (n=182) demonstrate robust psychometric properties and reveal interactionally coupled dimensions of user judgement. A short-form version of the EEQ is also proposed to support applied and time-constrained evaluation contexts. Implications for the design and evaluation of empathic conversational systems are discussed. |
