Preece David A, Petrova Kate, Mehta Ashish, Sikka Pilleriin, Gross James J
Curtin University, Curtin enAble Institute & School of Population Health, Perth, Australia; The University of Western Australia, School of Psychological Science, Perth, Australia.
Stanford University, Department of Psychology, Stanford, United States of America.
J Affect Disord. 2024 May 1;352:140-145. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2024.01.271. Epub 2024 Feb 4.
Alexithymia is an important transdiagnostic risk factor for emotion-based psychopathologies. However, it remains unclear whether alexithymia questionnaires actually measure alexithymia, or whether they measure emotional distress. Our aim here was to address this discriminant validity concern via exploratory factor analysis (EFA) of the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and the Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire (PAQ).
United States general community adults (N = 508) completed the TAS-20, PAQ, and the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21 (DASS-21). EFA was used to examine the latent dimensions underlying these measures' scores.
Our EFA extracted two higher-order factors, an "alexithymia" factor and a "general distress" factor (i.e., depression, anxiety, stress). All PAQ scores loaded cleanly on the alexithymia factor, with no cross-loadings on the distress factor. However, for the TAS-20, Difficulty Identifying Feelings (DIF) facet scores cross-loaded highly on the distress factor.
Our sample consisted of general community adults; future work in clinical settings will be useful.
Our data indicate that the PAQ has good discriminant validity. However, the TAS-20 appears to have significant discriminant validity problems, in that much of the variance in its DIF facet reflects people's current levels of distress, rather than alexithymia. The TAS-20, which has traditionally been the most widely used alexithymia questionnaire, may therefore not be the optimal alexithymia tool. Our findings add to the body of evidence supporting the validity and utility of the PAQ and suggest that, moving forward, it is a superior option to the TAS-20 for alexithymia assessments.
述情障碍是基于情绪的精神病理学的一个重要跨诊断风险因素。然而，目前尚不清楚述情障碍问卷是否真正测量了述情障碍，还是测量了情绪困扰。我们在此的目的是通过对20项多伦多述情障碍量表（TAS - 20）和珀斯述情障碍问卷（PAQ）进行探索性因素分析（EFA）来解决这种区分效度问题。
美国普通社区成年人（N = 508）完成了TAS - 20、PAQ和抑郁焦虑压力量表 - 21（DASS - 21）。EFA用于检验这些量表得分背后的潜在维度。
我们的EFA提取了两个高阶因素，一个“述情障碍”因素和一个“一般困扰”因素（即抑郁、焦虑、压力）。所有PAQ得分均清晰地加载在述情障碍因素上，在困扰因素上无交叉加载。然而，对于TAS - 20，难以识别情感（DIF）子量表得分在困扰因素上有高度交叉加载。
我们的样本由普通社区成年人组成；未来在临床环境中的研究将很有用。
我们的数据表明PAQ具有良好的区分效度。然而，TAS - 20似乎存在显著的区分效度问题，因为其DIF子量表的大部分方差反映的是人们当前的困扰水平，而非述情障碍。因此，传统上最广泛使用的述情障碍问卷TAS - 20可能不是最佳的述情障碍工具。我们的研究结果增加了支持PAQ效度和效用的证据，并表明，展望未来，在述情障碍评估方面，PAQ是比TAS - 20更优的选择。
