Living somebody else’s skin: Assessing Intercultural Competences and Ethnocultural Empathy in Colombian university students

The purpose of this study was the adaptation and validation of an instrument for the assessment of Intercultural Competence (IC) in Colombian university students according to the IC Model proposed by Deardorff (2006). The Everyday Multicultural Competencies Scale/Revised Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy (EMC/RSEE) (Mallinckrodt, Miles, Bhaskar, Chery, Choi & Sung, 2014) was chosen for the assessment of IC. First, the scale was translated and further adapted through cognitive pretesting. Then, for the validation of the scale, 496 students at Universidad de Los Andes responded to an online survey. The assumptions for factor analysis were met: KMO for sample adequacy (0.873) and Bartlett test of sphericity (x²(1081) = 8142.469; p < 0.001). The exploratory factor analysis using Varimax Rotation, showed correspondence with the original scale with some minor differences and high internal consistency (α = 0.64 to 0.87) as well as good adjustment (eigenvalues from 1.537 to 8.608). The 6 factor solution accounted for 46.035% of the variance. The dimensions “Cultural Openness” and “Awareness of Contemporary Racism and Privilege” remained equally reliable, “Resentment and Cultural Dominance” and “Empathic Feeling” had slightly lower values, and “Anxiety” and “Empathic Perspective-Taking” showed slightly higher reliability. Four items showed different dimension factor loading and six items showed no loading at all, which after closer examination were eliminated. To our knowledge, this study is the first to provide a complete scale, with good psychometric properties, for the assessment of IC in Spanish speaking populations and specifically adapted to Colombia.