Development Of The Self-Report Emotional Intelligent Scale And Toronto Alexithymia Scale Using Rasch Analysis

Background: Emotional intelligence theory has been got widespread concern in the academic community and increasingly rich theoretical research since it had been put forward. alexithymia, as a concept which has high correlation with individual’s emotion, also became academic research hot spot in recent years. These two traits have an important role in people’s mental health, relationships and happiness of life. Therefore, the researchers have also prepared a number of psychometrically screening tools trying to sort out the the structure of these concepts and their relationships. Meanwhile, there is also a growing awareness for people to measure emotional intelligence and alexithymia with credible psychometrically screening tools. It has been supported that the Emotional Intelligence Scale (EIS) and the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) has good psychometric properties using classical test theory (CTT). But for the shortcomings of CTT such as sample dependent and item dependent, and the original scores of the tests does not necessarily equidistant Which can’t be solved by itself make inaccurate estimation based on it, the great differences in the findings of various scholars and the test scores not suitable for compare. All the above causing great difficulties for the development of emotional intelligence and alexithymia theory. Modern test theory IRT model can effectively overcome the deficiencies of classical test theory. It’s appropriate to apply unidimensional Rasch model and multidimensional latent regression to analyze the correlation between these traits for these two scales.Objective and methods:Currently, there are rarely Rasch analysis to these two scales at home and abroad, as well as the test on the response categories of self-report scale. Therefore, we tried to use Rasch analysis software Winsteps and ConQuest to evaluate the psychometrical properties of Emotional Intelligence Scale (SSEIS) and Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) which administered to695ordinary college students and psychosomatic patients.Results:All the scales we used here fit the unidimensional model. The revised scale EIS-28(3point), TAS-20R(4point) and GESE-9have high reliability and better fit the Rasch model. We delete some bad fit item and DIF item of the three scale where was the5、6、17、28and33item of EIS, the8item of GESE. The correlation of the two traits, alexithymia and Emotional Intelligence was0.53by using multidimensional model, suggesting a moderate relationship between them.54can be the cutoff score to divide obviously have or not alexithymia on revised TAS-20R. The regression analysis showed that the state of health, education level and age had a significantly regression weight on alexithymia, and gender on self-efficacy, but there was no group difference on emotional intelligence.