Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Validation of a Greek adaptation of the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale

2009; Elsevier BV; Volume: 51; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.comppsych.2009.09.005

1532-8384

Ioannis Tsaousis, Graeme J. Taylor, Lena C. Quilty, Stelios Georgiades, Marios Stavrogiannopoulos, R. Michael Bagby,

Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment

The purpose of the current investigation was (1) to test whether the 3-factor structure of the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) corresponding to the theoretical conceptualization of the alexithymia construct could be recovered in a Greek translation of the scale (the TAS-20-G), (2) to assess if a 3-factor structure provides a better fit to the TAS-20-G compared with the recently proposed alternative factor structures, and (3) to evaluate the internal reliability of the TAS-20-G. The English version of the TAS-20 was translated into Greek and then back-translated and modified until cross-language equivalence was established. The Greek version was then administered to 340 university students. Confirmatory factor analyses were conducted, and 4 different factor structure models were compared. Internal consistency and item-to-scale homogeneity of the TAS-20-G and its factor scales were also evaluated. The 3-factor model provided a good fit to the data and proved superior to alternative 1-, 2-, and 4-factor models. Apart from a coefficient α below the recommended range for the externally oriented thinking factor, the TAS-20-G and its factor scales demonstrated adequate internal consistency and homogeneity. The TAS-20-G is a valid and reliable measure of alexithymia in university students and may be suitable for investigations of alexithymia in other Greek-speaking population samples.