Measuring clarity of and attention to emotions

Previous research has found that understanding one's emotions and attending to them are 2 dimensions of emotional awareness. In this research, we examined whether improved subscales for measuring clarity of and attention to emotions could be developed by selecting the best items from 2 frequently used measures of emotional awareness. Using multidimensional scaling and confirmatory factor analysis, we analyzed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (Bagby, Parker, Taylor, 1994) and the Trait Meta-Mood Scale (Salovey, Mayer, Goldman, Turvey, Palfai, 1995) data from 867 college students. Results supported distinct clarity and attention constructs. New subscales were internally consistent and fared as well as or better than previous versions in terms of internal consistency and convergent validity.