Alexithymia and its measurement: confirmatory factor analyses of the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale and the Bermond–Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire

✍ Scribed by Emmanuelle Zech; Olivier Luminet; Bernard Rimé; Hugh Wagner

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 185 KB
• Volume: 13
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0890-2070
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0984(199911/12)13:6<511::aid-per347>3.0.co;2-0

✦ Synopsis

Alexithymia refers to the diculties an individual has in experiencing and expressing feelings. The 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and the Bermond±Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire (BVAQ) with two parallel versions of 20 items have been constructed to measure it. The present study compared the psychometric properties of these two self-report questionnaires in English (N 290) and French (N 322) language versions. Con®rmatory factor analysis was used to examine the ®t between the hypothesized factors and the data. Results revealed a better ®t to the data for the second version of the BVAQ (BVAQ-20B) for both language versions as compared to the TAS-20, the whole BVAQ, or the ®rst version of the BVAQ (BVAQ-20A). Additionally, the factor comparison of both language versions indicated that only the factorial structure of the BVAQ-20B was replicable across languages. Concurrent validity of the questionnaires is discussed.