The Dutch Language Version of the Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia: Reliability, Factor Structure and Concurrent Validity

Abstract

The aim of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Dutch version of the Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia (TSIA) in a clinical sample. The TSIA and the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) were administered to 85 psychiatric inpatients and to 76 medical outpatients with the symptom of tinnitus. Both internal and inter-rater reliability were acceptable. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the hierarchical, 4-factor structure with 4 lower-order factors nested within 2 higher-order latent factors, previously obtained with English, German, and Italian versions. Concurrent validity was supported by significant correlations between the TSIA and the TAS-20 total scores although there were some differences between the psychiatric subsample and the medical subsample. While further studies are needed to assess the convergent and discriminant validity of the TSIA, the results support its use as a measure of alexithymia.

Alexithymic features and the labeling of brief emotional facial expressions – An fMRI study

“…The correlation of r ¼.45 between self-report (TAS-20) and observer-rated (TSIA) measure of alexithymia in the current study is comparable with correlations found in other studies in which TAS-20 and TSIA have been administered. Bagby et al (2006), for example, reported a correlation of r¼ .36 in normal participants, whereas correlation coefficients of r ¼.34 (Inslegers et al, 2013), r ¼ .49 , or r ¼47 (Meganck et al, 2011) have been observed in patient samples. Caretti et al (2011) reported a correlation of r ¼.44 in a mixed sample of patients and healthy controls.…”

Measurement equivalence of the Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia across language, gender, and clinical status

“…The Dutchspeaking group consisted of 85 psychiatric inpatients with a mood and/or anxiety disorder (32 men, 53 women; mean age¼39.92 years, S.D. ¼12.26) and 76 medical outpatients suffering from chronic tinnitus (48 men, 28 women; mean age¼47.82 years, S. D.¼13.42) recruited from several hospitals in the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium (for further details see Inslegers et al, 2013). The Italian-speaking group consisted of 62 psychiatric outpatients with a generalized anxiety disorder, dysthymia, or eating disorder (21 men, 41 women; mean age¼ 31.77 years, S.D.…”

“…For this purpose, Bagby et al (2006) developed the Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia (TSIA) as an interview-based method for measuring the construct that may be used in conjunction with self-report or performance-based measures. The TSIA has been translated into Dutch, German, and Italian languages, and reliability, factorial validity, and concurrent validity of the measure have been demonstrated across clinical and nonclinical samples (Bagby et al, 2006;Grabe et al, 2009;Caretti et al, 2011;Inslegers et al, 2013). Notwithstanding cross-validation of the instrument and the use of back-translation procedures in developing the Dutch, German, and Italian translations of the TSIA, as noted by Ellis (1989), these steps are not sufficient to establish the property of measurement equivalence of any psychological or psychiatric test.…”

“…The mean TSIA score of a Dutch-speaking psychiatric patient sample was lower than the mean score for an Italian-speaking psychiatric sample, although similar to the mean scores of English-speaking and German-speaking psychiatric patient samples (Inslegers et al, 2013). And the mean TSIA score of a Dutch-speaking sample of patients with chronic tinnitus was lower than the mean score of an Italian-speaking sample of patients with hypertension and circulatory problems (Inslegers et al, 2013). The question arises, however, as to whether these group differences reflect true differences in the alexithymia trait or are due to measurement artifacts.…”

Alexithymia, Depression, Trait-anxiety and Their Relation to Self-reported Retrospective Dream Experience

“…In the present study, the 24-item Toronto Structured Interview for Alexithymia [TSIA;24] was used to assess alexithymia. The TSIA is a reliable structured interviewbased method that, as an external rated device, prevents the bound of a self-evaluative approach as for example, do the dominant measures for assessing alexithymia [25,26]. This instrument has been recently proved to have no stable connection to self-reported negative affect [27] and, an additional strength of the TSIA, is to introduce items for detecting the lack of imaginative and fantasy aspects of the alexithymia construct [28,29].…”