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 validity of the farsi version of the toronto alexithymia scale-20 in a sample of opioid substance use disordered patients. methods: 321 substance dependent patients (287 male, 34 female) participated in this study. all of the participants were asked to complete the farsi version of the toronto alexithymia scale-20 (ftas-20), the emotional intelligence scale (eis-41), and the mental health inventory (mhi). in order to examine the internal consistency of the ftas-20, cronbach’s alpha coefficients were calculated for the entire sample. pearson’s correlation coefficient was used to estimate the test-retest reliability of the alexithymia dimensions. to examine the concurrent validity of the ftas-20, a series of zero-order correlations were conducted between the ftas-20 subscales, emotional intelligence and mental health variables. confirmatory factor analysis (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 for substance users were supported by findings. conclusions: the factors found in the farsi version of the tas-20, are similar to the three factors found in a study conducted by bagby, parker and taylor; 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 its cross-cultural validity