As technology advances, it becomes increasingly important to assess how humans perceive and respond to empathy from digital interfaces and devices. The "Perceived Empathy of Technology Scale" is a tool used to measure how empathetically users experience these interactions. However, this scale is currently only available in English, limiting research to English-speaking populations. With a Japanese translation, researchers can more effectively evaluate perceptions of empathy in technology among Japanese-speaking users, expanding the scale’s reach and supporting cross-cultural research on empathy in human-technology interaction.

You will:

• Conduct a literature review on empathy perception in human-technology interaction, including tools for measuring empathy.
• Translate the "Perceived Empathy of Technology Scale" into Japanese using a forward-backward translation approach to ensure accuracy.
• Collaborate with two independent translators to create an initial translation, then consolidate the versions into one.
• Back-translate the consolidated version with a new set of translators to verify consistency with the original English version.
• Consult domain experts in psychology and human-technology interaction to review the translated scale for cultural relevance and content accuracy.
• Conduct a pilot test with a small sample of Japanese-speaking participants to detect issues like misunderstandings or ambiguities in wording.
• Perform psychometric validation of the final Japanese version, including Confirmatory Factor Analysis, Criterion Validity, and Measurement Invariance Analysis.
• Summarize your findings in a thesis and present them.
• (Optional) Co-author a research paper based on your findings.

You need:

• Strong communication skills in Japanese and English
• Understanding of psychometric evaluation and analysis
• (Optional) Prior experience in translation and back-translation processes
• Fundamental skills in statistical analysis software (e.g., R)