Ruiz, F. J., Salazar, D. M., Suárez-Falcón, J. C., Peña-Vargas, A., Ehring, T., Barreto-Zambrano, M. L., & Gómez-Barreto, M. P. (2020). Psychometric Properties and Measurement Invariance Across Gender and Age-Group of the Perseverative Thinking Questionnaire–Children (PTQ-C) in Colombia. Assessment, 27(7), 1657–1667. https://doi.org/10.1177/1073191119843580
Recent research has found that repetitive negative thinking (RNT) is an important transdiagnostic process both in adult and child psychopathology. This finding has led some authors to design content-independent measures of RNT that can be administered across disorders. One of these instruments is the Perseverative Thinking Questionnaire (PTQ) and its version for children (PTQ-C). This study presents the Spanish translation of the PTQ-C and its psychometric analysis in a sample of 1,127 Colombian children and adolescents (8-18 years old). All items obtained good discrimination indexes, and internal consistency was excellent (.93). A cross-validation study was conducted to analyze the factor structure of the PTQ-C, which strongly supported the one-factor structure. Measurement invariances across gender and age-group (8-12 and 13-18 years old) were also found. The PTQ-C scores for older boys were lower than for younger boys, whereas the inverse pattern was found for girls. The PTQ-C showed strong correlations with measures of pathological worry, emotional symptoms, and psychological inflexibility. In conclusion, the Spanish translation of the PTQ-C appears to be a valid and reliable measure of RNT.