Alexithymia Study


Project Description and development:

This project examined the ability of men and women to acknowledge, understand, and address their emotions, and the effects that this had on their mental health.  Also include all measures on male role norms which aims to assess how Jamaican men and women view male norms.
 

Measures:

    General Information Form: The general information form is an open-ended questionnaire that provides information on several different dimensions including: a) religious background, b) clinical background, c) parents' education, d) parents' employment, e) household composition, f) sibship rank, g) living conditions, and h) parents' migration.  The items (i.e. who is the person mainly responsible for raising the child?) reflect the child's personal background, as well as risk factors and physical/mental health history.

    Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI; Derogatis, 19XX):  The BSI is a 53-item self-administered measure. All items are rated on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 0-reflecting no distress to 4-indicating extreme distress. In it's original form, the BSI comprises nine dimensions labeled Somatization, Obsessive Compulsive, Interpersonal Sensitivity, Depression, Anxiety, Hostility, Phobic Anxiety, Paranoid Ideation, and Psychoticism, and total problem score.  (For CFA and EFA's on these data sets: on SAM, open data/Thymia/programs.  Run SAS using either efabsi or cfabsi.)

    Family Adaptation and Cohesion Environment Scales (FACES II; Olson et al., 1982):  The FACES is a 30 item scale.  Subjects are asked to rate each statement (i.e. In our family it is easy for everyone to say what they think) on a 3-point scale: N=no, S=sometimes, and A=always.  The FACES II enables the researcher or clinician to place individual family members or groups of families within the Circumplex Model.  There are three primary dimensions integrated in the Circumplex Model, including cohesion, adaptability (change), and communication.  However, only family cohesion and family adaptability are measured in the FACES II.  Family cohesion assesses how much family members are separated from or connected to their family.  Family adaptability has to do with the extent to which the family system is flexible and able to change.  Communication is broken down into three sub-groups; Family communication, Parent-adolescent communication, and Marital communication.

    Emotions Inventory: The Emotions Inventory consists of 6 demographic questions (i.e.  race, marital status) and 32 questions (i.e.  I often feel happy, I always know why I cry) rated on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1-strongly disagree to 5-strongly agree.  Subscales for this measure are currently unknown.  The analysis of the data should yield results which can later determine the scales.

    Taylor Scale: The Taylor Scale consists of 20 questions rated on a five-point Likert scale (i.e.  it is difficult for me to say how I feel) ranging from 1-strongly disagree to 5-strongly agree.  The scale is designed to focus on 3 dimensions including: a) Identifying one's own feelings, b) describing one's own feelings, and c) externally oriented thinking.

    Male Role Norms Inventory: The Male Role Norms Inventory in its revised form, is a 57 item questionairre.  Each participant is asked to rate the questions (i.e. a man should prefer football to sewing, a man should love his sex partner) on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1-strongly disagree to 5-strongly agree.  The scale accounts for eight subscales including: a)Avoidance of Femininity, b) Rejection of Homosexuals, c) Self-Reliance, d) Aggression, e) Achievement/Status, f) Attitudes toward Sex, and g) Restrictive Emotionality.


Datasets:  On Sam once in SAS:  sasuser.thymall6

SAS programs used to create datasets:
On SAM in: data\thymia\programs\

data\thymia\programs\readthy.sas: initial file to read in data

Program files: There are a variety of SAS program files, which were used for various analyses and can be used as examples.

Papers which have been done using these data:
Status of project:   Data collection is complete.  Data may be analyzed and written up for various presentations and publications.  Dave Rose did his thesis using the BSI and the Alexithymia data.