Assessing alexithymia in adolescents: psychometric properties of the Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire in high school students

Conceptually, alexithymia is a key transdiagnostic risk factor for the development of numerous psychopathologies across the lifespan. However, to date, most alexithymia research has focused on adults, with adolescent work limited by a lack of validated age-appropriate assessment tools. Recently, the Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire (PAQ) was introduced to enhance the comprehensiveness of alexithymia assessments, but its psychometric properties have only been tested in adults. In this study, we address this by examining the psychometric properties of the PAQ in a sample of English-speaking high school students (N = 225, aged 11 to 18), and use the PAQ to further establish the structure of the alexithymia construct in adolescents. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that all PAQ items conformed well to the expected factor structure, supporting that the PAQ was measuring a coherent multidimensional construct, consistent with the attention-appraisal model of alexithymia. All subscale and composite scores had good to excellent internal consistency (alpha range = .83 to .95) and correlated in expected ways with other emotion measures. Together, these findings suggest that the multidimensional structure of the alexithymia construct manifests similarly in adolescents and adults, and that the PAQ is a valid and reliable measure of alexithymia in adolescents. What is already known about this topic: Alexithymia is an important transdiagnostic risk factor for the development and maintenance of a range of psychopathologies.To date, most work on alexithymia has been done in adults.There is a lack of validated alexithymia measures for adolescents.What this topic adds: In this study, we examine the validity and reliability of the Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire (PAQ) in adolescents, using the PAQ to explore the structure of the alexithymia construct in this age group.We find that the PAQ demonstrates strong validity and reliability in adolescents as a measure of the multidimensional alexithymia construct.Our data suggest that the PAQ will now enable detailed work on alexithymia to extend from adults to adolescents.