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

Alexithymia refers to the difficulties an individual has in experiencing-an d expressing feelings. The 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and t he Bermond-Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire (BVAQ) with two parallel version s of 20 items have been constructed 20 measure it. The present study compar ed the psychometric properties of these two self-report questionnaires in E nglish (N = 290) and French (N = 322) language versions. Confirmatory facto r analysis was used to examine the fit between the hypothesized factors and the data. Results revealed a better fit to the data for the second version of the BVAQ (BVAQ-20B) for both language versions as compared to the TAS-2 0, the whole BVAQ, or the first version of the BVAQ (BVAQ-20A). Additionall y, the factor comparison of both language versions indicated that only the factorial structure of the BVAQ-20B was replicable across languages. Concur rent validity of the questionnaires is discussed. Copyright (C) 1999 John W iley & Sons, Ltd.