Author:

Keywords:

Social Sciences, Science & Technology, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Psychology, Clinical, Psychiatry, Psychology, Bifactor model, Confirmatory factor analysis, Negative affectivity, Symptom perception, Symptom reporting, MEDICALLY UNEXPLAINED SYMPTOMS, LATENT STRUCTURE, RETROSPECTIVE MEMORY, SOMATOFORM DISORDERS, PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS, BIFACTOR MODELS, PRIMARY-CARE, FIT INDEXES, COMPLAINTS, TUTORIAL, 1103 Clinical Sciences, 1701 Psychology, 5201 Applied and developmental psychology, 5203 Clinical and health psychology, 5205 Social and personality psychology

Abstract:

Psychological accounts of symptom perception put forward that symptom experiences consist of sensory-perceptual and affective-motivational components. This division is also suggested by psychometric studies investigating the latent structure of symptom reporting. To corroborate the view that the general and symptom-specific factors of a bifactor model represent affective and sensory components, respectively, we performed bifactor models applying confirmatory factor analytic approaches to the Patient Health Questionnaire-15 and the Checklist for Symptoms in Daily Life completed by 1053 undergraduate students. Additionally, we explored the association of latent factors with negative affectivity (NA). For both questionnaires, a bifactor model with one general and several symptom-specific factors revealed the best fit to the data. NA yielded large associations with the general factor, but smaller ones with somatic symptom-specific factors in both questionnaires. The observed latent structure supports a distinction between sensory-perceptual and affective-motivational components, and the association between the NA and the general factor confirms the affective tone of the latter.