Reliability and Validity of the Short Form of the Reflective Function Questionnaire

The aim of this study was to validate or determine the psychometric properties of the Reflection Function Questionnaire. The statistical population of this study included all students of Payam Noor universities in West Azerbaijan (Miandoab, Shahindej, Bukan, Urmia) and Tabriz who were studying in the academic year 2017-2018. Among them, 570 people were selected by multi-stage cluster sampling, and answered the 8-question Reflective Function Questionnaire (RFQ). The collected data was randomly divided into two equal parts (n=285) for exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. The results obtained from exploratory factor analysis with principal components and oblimin rotation showed a two-factor structure which were named certainty and uncertainty. The amount of eigenvalue for certainty and uncertainty were 2.04 and 1.39, respectively. Also, the first factor (certainty) and the second factor (uncertainty) explained 25.56 and 13.42 percent of the variance of scores. The results of confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the bifactor structure (χ2=76.12, df=48, P=0.01; GFI=0.98; AGFI=0.96; CFI=0.98; RMSEA=0.03). Cronbach's alpha coefficients for factors were 0.78 and 0.76, respectively. In addition, the retest results for certainty and uncertainty factors were 0.76 and 0.73, respectively, and the composite reliability index for these two factors were 0.88 and 0.86, respectively. The results of Pearson's correlation to examine convergent validity with attachment styles and Emotion regulation difficulty showed that there is a significant relationship between these variables at the 0.01 level. Also, using the Fornell and Locker index, the discriminant validity of RFQ was confirmed. According to the obtained results, the validity and reliability of the Persian version of RFQ can be confirmed .