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Psicothema was founded in Asturias (northern Spain) in 1989, and is published jointly by the Psychology Faculty of the University of Oviedo and the Psychological Association of the Principality of Asturias (Colegio Oficial de Psicología del Principado de Asturias).
We currently publish four issues per year, which accounts for some 100 articles annually. We admit work from both the basic and applied research fields, and from all areas of Psychology, all manuscripts being anonymously reviewed prior to publication.

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  • Director: Laura E. Gómez Sánchez
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Spanish Adaptation of the Mentalization Questionnaire (MZQ) in Community Adolescents and Adults

Jacqueline Nonweiler1 , Eduardo Doval1 , Neus Barrantes-Vidal1,2 and Sergi Ballespí1

1 Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain),
2 CIBER de Salud Mental, Instituto de Salud Carlos III (Spain)

Background: Despite the role of mentalization in mental health outcomes and prevention, psychometrically-evaluated screening measures for mentalization remain sparse. One widely-used mentalization questionnaire is the Mentalization Questionnaire (MZQ; Hausberg et al., 2012), which we aimed to adapt and validate for use in Spanish. Method: We adapted the MZQ to European Spanish and evaluated its psychometric properties in both adolescent (n = 389, ages 12-19, M = 14.5) and adult community samples (n = 382, M = 48).  Results: Confirmatory factor analysis resulted in a unidimensional structure including all items. This model had better goodness of fit than  the original and other adaptations. Invariance analysis showed the same structure in adolescents compared by sex and age, and additionally in the adult versus adolescent samples. Evidence for convergent and discriminant validity was found. Internal consistency values in both adolescents and parents were fair and in the adolescent sample the MZQ scores remained moderately stable after re-test. Conclusions: The Spanish adaptation of the MZQ presents similar evidence of reliability and validity in the adolescent and adult samples. The results support this being a suitable version for evaluating mentalization in the general population.

Antecedentes: A pesar del creciente reconocimiento de la mentalización como factor en el desarrollo de la salud mental y la prevención, las medidas de cribado validadas psicométricamente siguen siendo escasas. El Cuestionario de Mentalización (MZQ; Hausberg et al., 2012) es uno de los más utilizados. El objetivo es adaptar y validar su uso al español. Método: Adaptamos el MZQ al español  europeo en muestras comunitarias de adolescentes (n = 389, edades 12-19, M = 14,5) y de adultos (n = 382, M = 48). Resultados: Se realizó un análisis factorial confirmatorio que expuso una estructura unifactorial para ambas muestras. Este modelo presentó mejores índices de ajuste que los modelos presentados en la versión original y en las adaptaciones. El estudio de invariancia mostró la misma estructura en la muestra de adolescentes cuando se compararon por sexo y edad, y también en la muestra de adultos comparada con la muestra de adolescentes. Se encontraron evidencias de validez convergente y discriminante. Conclusiones: La adaptación del MZQ al español presenta evidencias de validez y fiabilidad similares en la muestra de adolescentes y en la de adultos. Los resultados apoyan que se trata de una versión apta para evaluar la mentalización en población general.

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Impact factor 2022:  JCR WOS 2022:  FI = 3.6 (Q2);  JCI = 1.21 (Q1) / SCOPUS 2023:  SJR = 1.07;  CiteScore = 6.4 (Q1)