assessing reliability and validity of farsi version of the toronto alexithymia scale-20 in a sample of opioid substance use disordered patients

objective: the aim of this study was to investigate the reliability and validityof the farsi version of the toronto alexithymia scale-20 in a sample of opioidsubstance use disordered patients. methods: 321 substance dependent patients (287 male, 34 female)participated in this study. all of the participants were asked to complete thefarsi version of the toronto alexithymia scale-20 (ftas-20), the emotionalintelligence scale (eis-41), and the mental health inventory (mhi). in orderto examine the internal consistency of the ftas-20, cronbach's alphacoefficients were calculated for the entire sample. pearson's correlationcoefficient was used to estimate the test-retest reliability of the alexithymiadimensions. to examine the concurrent validity of the ftas-20, a series ofzero-order correlations were conducted between the ftas-20 subscales,emotional intelligence and mental health variables. confirmatory factoranalysis (cfa) was utilized to test the three-factor structure of the ftas-20. results: the internal consistency, test-retest reliability, concurrent validity,and the three-factor structure of the farsi version of the tas-20 forsubstance users were supported by findings. conclusions: the factors found in the farsi version of the tas-20, aresimilar to the three factors found in a study conducted by bagby, parker andtaylor; the factors were accordingly labeled as difficulty identifying feelings(dif), difficulty describing feelings (ddf) and externally-oriented thinking(eot). the results provide evidence for applicability of the tas-20 and itscross-cultural validity.