Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire (PAQ) Test

People who often struggle to recognize, interpret, or put feelings into words can use the Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire (PAQ) Test to examine these patterns more closely. It suits anyone seeking a structured alexithymia test for self-reflection, especially when emotional attention seems difficult to sustain. The result separates difficulties with pleasant and unpleasant emotions instead of reducing them to one label.

What This Assessment Explores

This alexithymia questionnaire examines attention, identification, appraisal, and description of positive and negative feelings. Its profile separates overall, positive, negative, and general difficulties. Scales include:

• Overall Alexithymia (24-168) reflects overall difficulty: Lower alexithymia 24-71, Moderate alexithymia 72-119, Higher alexithymia 120-168.
• Identification scales measure difficulty recognizing feelings: Negative-Difficulty Identifying Feelings (N-DIF), Positive Difficulty Identifying Feelings (P-DIF), and Difficulty Identifying Feelings (G-DIF) each span 0-56: Low difficulty 0-18, Moderate difficulty 19-37, High difficulty 38-56.
• Appraisal scales measure difficulty recognizing and expressing feelings: Negative Difficulty Appraising Feelings (N-DAF) and Positive Difficulty Appraising Feelings (P-DAF) span 0-56; Difficulty Appraising Feelings (G-DAF) spans 16-112: Low difficulty 0-18/16-47, Moderate difficulty 19-37/48-79, High difficulty 38-56/80-112.
• Externally Oriented Thinking (G-EOT) reflects less focus on emotion and spans 8-56: Low externally-oriented thinking 8-23, Moderate externally-oriented thinking 24-39, High externally-oriented thinking 40-56.

Methodology and Scientific Basis

Each statement uses a seven-point agreement scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree, capturing degrees of endorsement rather than yes-or-no answers. The items pair pleasant and unpleasant feelings with identifying, describing, understanding, and attending to them.

Responses are combined into facet and general indices. Higher values indicate greater alexithymia or difficulty on identification, description, or appraisal dimensions, while higher scores on the attention dimension reflect less focus on inner emotion. The displayed bands organize this alexithymia assessment into low, moderate, or high ranges for the questionnaire.

The online measure is conceptually consistent with the Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire (Preece et al., 2018) and the attention-appraisal model described by Preece et al. (2017), but it is not presented as an adaptation of that published instrument. Preece et al. (2020) provide evidence about PAQ psychometric properties and compare it with the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale. This supports the published framework rather than establishing independent norms for every online presentation.

Self-report can be influenced by current context, self-awareness, and willingness to endorse statements, so the result is a snapshot rather than a diagnosis.