Parker James D A, Keefer Kateryna V, Taylor Graeme J, Bagby R Michael
Department of Psychology, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada.
Psychol Assess. 2008 Dec;20(4):385-96. doi: 10.1037/a0014262.
Despite a wealth of research on the validity of alexithymia and its association with a number of common medical and psychiatric disorders, the fundamental question of whether alexithymia is best conceptualized as a dimensional or categorical construct remains unresolved. In the current investigation, taxometric analysis is used to examine the nature of the latent structure of alexithymia. Several nonredundant taxometric procedures were performed with item sets from the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (R. M. Bagby, J. D. A. Parker, & G. J. Taylor, 1994) as indicators. These procedures were applied separately in large community (n = 1,933) and undergraduate (n = 1,948) samples and in a smaller sample of psychiatric outpatients (n = 302). The results across various taxometric procedures and the different samples provide strong support that alexithymia is a dimensional construct. Some theoretical implications of these findings for research on the alexithymia construct are discussed.
尽管对述情障碍的有效性及其与多种常见医学和精神疾病的关联进行了大量研究，但述情障碍最好被概念化为维度结构还是类别结构这一基本问题仍未得到解决。在当前的调查中，运用了分类分析来检验述情障碍潜在结构的本质。以20项多伦多述情障碍量表（R. M. 巴格比、J. D. A. 帕克和G. J. 泰勒，1994年）的条目集作为指标，进行了几种非冗余的分类分析程序。这些程序分别应用于大型社区样本（n = 1933）、本科样本（n = 1948）以及较小的精神科门诊患者样本（n = 302）。各种分类分析程序和不同样本的结果都有力地支持了述情障碍是一种维度结构的观点。本文讨论了这些发现对述情障碍结构研究的一些理论启示。
