Abstract

ROMO GONZALEZ, Tania et al. Validation of the Mexican version of the Weinberger Adjustment Inventory (WAI). Salud Ment [online]. 2014, vol.37, n.3, pp.247-253. ISSN 0185-3325.

Introduction The inability to control emotional outbursts and the excessive inhibition of emotions are associated with a variety of personal and interpersonal problems, psychological disorders and health status. Weinberger developed an inventory to assesses two central aspects of socio-emotional adjustment: the subjective experience of distress and restraint. As the inventory was in English, we decided to translate it into Spanish and validated it in a population of Spanish-speaking Mexicans. Method The revised Spanish WAI was applied to 452 participants using the same Likert scale used in the English WAI, in which each answer was given a score of five points. The participants were adults (over 18 years) of either sex with a minimum educational level of high school. Results After analyzing the discriminatory power of the questions by the method of extreme groups and factor analysis by principal components analysis, the Spanish WAI was composed of 44 items, which were divided into four factors: 1. Restraint, which grouped together a total of 19 questions, which explained 18.68% of the variance, 2. Subjective experience of distress, consisting of 12 questions, which accounted for 10.84% of the variance, 3. Defensiveness, consisting of seven questions that explained 7.10% of the variance, and 4. Consideration for Others, which grouped six questions that explained 6.54% of the variance. Finally, we assessed the reliability of the questionnaire using Cronbach's alpha as follows: Restraint 0.89, Subjective experience of distress 0.84, Defensiveness 0.69, and Consideration for others 0.74. Conclusions Weinberger's Inventory is a useful instrument to assess restraint as an important aspect of emotional distress of individuals, and to measure the magnitude of restraint in a population, and thus allowing preventive and therapeutic actions in cases that deserve it.

Keywords : Spanish validation; Weinberger inventory; distress; emotional restraint; socio-emotional adjustment; Spanish-speaking.

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