The Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire-Short Form (PAQ-S): Psychometric properties in a clinical sample

Alexithymia is a trait that involves deficits in emotion processing and has important implications for mental health. The assessment of alexithymia is therefore clinically consequential, but until recently, alexithymia questionnaires were all quite lengthy, limiting their utility in time-pressured research and clinical settings. Recently, the Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire-Short Form (PAQ-S) was introduced to address this gap, providing a brief 6-item self-report measure of alexithymia. In this study, we evaluate the psychometric performance of the PAQ-S in a clinical sample. Five hundred thirty-one individuals with various mental health diagnoses completed the PAQ-S and other psychometric measures of clinically-relevant constructs. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the PAQ-S had a theoretically congruent factor structure, with items loading significantly on a general alexithymia factor. The PAQ-S displayed high internal consistency, and an expected pattern of associations with other constructs (i.e., psychopathology symptoms, somatic symptoms, personality dysfunction, attention difficulties, memory complaints, emotion regulation, life satisfaction, self-esteem, and social desirability). Overall, our data suggest the scores on the PAQ-S exhibit strong validity and reliability in clinical populations. Its brevity makes the PAQ-S a practical tool for alexithymia assessments in time-limited settings, enabling new opportunities to explore the clinical relevance of alexithymia. • The PAQ-S shows a congruent single-factor structure in a clinical sample. • PAQ-S scores demonstrate high internal consistency (omega = 0.84). • Higher alexithymia links to more psychopathology, somatic symptoms, and poor memory. • Higher alexithymia links to lower self-esteem and life satisfaction. • PAQ-S scores are unaffected by social desirability bias.