Journal of clinical psychology | 2021
The Italian version of the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire: Validity within a sample of adolescents and associations with psychological problems and alexithymia.
Abstract
OBJECTIVES\nThis study aims to test the psychometric proprieties of the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (RFQ) applied to younger (13-16 years) and older (17-20 years) Italian adolescents examining (1) the factorial structure of RFQ; (2) its invariance across age and sex; (3) correlations between RFQ subscale scores, as well as the associations of the RFQ with (4) psychological problems and alexithymia dimensions.\n\n\nMETHODS\nA cross-sectional study was conducted with 593 adolescents between the ages of 13 and 20 years old recruited from the community within Italy. These participants completed the RFQ, Symptom Checklist-90, and Toronto Alexithymia Scale.\n\n\nRESULTS\nThe two-factor structure of the RFQ was confirmed. However, higher internal consistency of RFQ was obtained by removing two items that seemed problematic within this sample. Using a six-item version of RFQ, the two-factor structure was invariant across adolescent age and sex. Significant correlations among RFQ subscale scores, and between RFQ subscales with both psychological problems and alexithymia dimensions were found.\n\n\nCONCLUSIONS\nPreliminary results reveal a short version of RFQ (six-item) is a suitable measure to assess mentalizing in adolescents in the Italian context.