Reliability and validity of the Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia in a mixed clinical and nonclinical sample from Italy

• Published in: Psychiatry research Vol. 187; no. 3; pp. 432 - 436
• Main Authors: Caretti, Vincenzo, Porcelli, Piero, Solano, Luigi, Schimmenti, Adriano, Bagby, R. Michael, Taylor, Graeme J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kidlington Elsevier Ireland Ltd 30.05.2011; Elsevier
• Subjects: Affective Symptoms - diagnosis; Affective Symptoms - epidemiology; Alexithymia; Biological and medical sciences; Concurrent validity; Confirmatory factor analysis; Factor Analysis, Statistical; Humans; Interviews as Topic; Italy - epidemiology; Medical sciences; Multimethod measurement; Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychometrics - methods; Psychometrics. Diagnostic aid systems; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Reproducibility of Results; Statistics as Topic; Techniques and methods; Toronto Alexithymia Scale; Translating; Videotape Recording; Italy; Multimethod measurement; Confirmatory factor analysis; Toronto Alexithymia Scale; Alexithymia; Concurrent validity; Social environment; Human; Italian; Personality test; Foreign language version; Healthy subject; Internal consistency; Psychometrics; Personality; Test reliability; Test validation; Construct validity; Interrater agreement; Convergent validity; Directive interview; Mental disorder; Somatic disease
• ISSN: 0165-1781; 1872-7123
• DOI: 10.1016/j.psychres.2011.02.015

The reliability and validity of the Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia (TSIA) have been demonstrated in previous studies with English-speaking community and psychiatric samples and a German-speaking psychiatric sample. The aim of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the TSIA in a mixed clinical and nonclinical sample from Italy. The original English version of the TSIA was translated into Italian and administered, along with the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), to 80 healthy subjects, 69 medical outpatients, and 62 psychiatric outpatients. Eighty-one videotaped interviews were used for assessing the interrater reliability. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the hierarchical, four-factor structure of the TSIA obtained in previous studies, with four lower-order factors nested within two higher-order latent factors. The TSIA also demonstrated internal and interrater reliability, and concurrent validity with the TAS-20. The results support the use of the TSIA to assess alexithymia especially when a multimethod approach to measurement is possible.