Received: 20 July 2020 Revised: 10 September 2020 Accepted: 22 September 2020 DOI: 10.1002/jdd.12444 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Psychometry and estimation of cutoff points of Jefferson Scale of empathy in dental students Víctor P. Díaz PhD 1 Alejandro Reyes Ms, Ps 2 Aracelis Calzadilla MD 3, 4 Pilar A. Torres DDS,MA 5 Eugenia González MD 6 Jorge L. Bilbao PhD 7 Farith González PhD, DDS 8 Nuvia Estrada DDS 9 Natalia Fortich DDS 10 Wilmer Sepúlveda DDS 11 María G. Silva-Vetri DDS, MSc 12 Miriam Bullen PhD, DDS 13 Ana M. Erazo PhD, DDS 7 1 Dentistry Faculty, Universidad Andres Bello, Santiago, Chile 2 Faculty of Social Sciences and communications, Universidad Santo Tomás, Concepción, Chile 3 Faculty of Health, Universidad Bernardo OHiggins, Santiago, Chile 4 Faculty of Health Sciences, Universidad Autónoma de Chile, Chile 5 Dentistry Faculty, Universidad San Sebastián, Concepción, Chile 6 Dentistry Faculty, Universidad Central del Este, Dominican Republic 7 Research Department, Universidad Metropolitana, Barranquilla, Colombia 8 Dentistry Faculty, Universidad de Cartagena, Colombia 9 Dentistry Faculty, Universidad Evangélica de El Salvador, El Salvador 10 Dentistry Faculty, Corporación Universitaria Rafael Núñez, Cartagena, Colombia 11 Dentistry Faculty, Universidad Santiago de Cali, Cali, Colombia 12 Dentistry Faculty, Universidad Nacional Pedro Henríquez Ureña, Dominican Republic 13 Dentistry Faculty, Universidad de Panamá, Panama Correspondence Pilar Torres Martínez, DDS, MA, Den- tistry Faculty, Universidad San Sebastián. Lientur 1457, Concepción, Chile. Email: pilar.torres@uss.cl Financial disclosure statement: Financed by the authors themselves. Abstract Objective: The objective of this study was to determine the psychometric proper- ties of the 3-dimensional latent model of empathy on the Jefferson Scale of Physi- cian Empathy instrument (version S), and to verify the existence of cutoff points capable of differentiating empathy measures classified as: “high,” “medium,” and “low” using data collected from observations of students from 11 dental fac- ulties of 5 Central American and Caribbean countries (n = 3082) between 2015 and 2019. Methods: This is an exploratory, “a posteriori,” and non-experimental study. Factor structure and factor invariance by country and gender were analyzed. Hierarchical cluster analysis and bifactorial analysis were applied, and the data were normalized by cluster and by percentiles within them. Results: Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the original model was repli- cable and fit the data, while multigroup analysis allowed assuming an invariant factor structure by country and by gender. There is reliability in the measurement made by the scale and its dimensions. J Dent Educ. 2020;1–9. © 2020 American Dental Education Association 1 wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jdd