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Validity and Reliability of the Interpersonal Competence Questionnaire: Empirical Evidence from an Italian Study

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Abstract

Interpersonal competence is crucial to human life, and poor social functioning is a typical feature of various psychopathological conditions. Given the relevance of the construct, increasing attention has recently been paid to the Interpersonal Competence Questionnaire (ICQ; Buhrmester et al. 1988), a 40-item self-report measuring five domains of interpersonal competence. To provide additional data on the cross-cultural adaptability of the ICQ, we developed an Italian version and investigated its psychometric properties with two independent student samples. Respondents were mostly women (about three quarters), ranging in age from 18 to 57. Study 1 (n = 408) tested factor structure, internal consistency, and convergent validity. Study 2 (n = 59) investigated test-retest reliability. Taken together, the results of both these studies provided support for the cross-cultural applicability of the ICQ, and revealed interesting associations between interpersonal competence and constructs such as well-being, emotion dysregulation and empathy.

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Notes

  1. To obtain a copy of the Italian ICQ, please contact the corresponding author via email.

  2. These are valid percentages. Missing data are 7 cases for age, 2 cases for gender, and 21 cases for ethnicity.

  3. Because homoscedasticity could not be assumed, Welch-Satterthwaite method was used to adjust degrees of freedom.

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Conflict of Interest

Luciano Giromini, Gaia de Campora, Emanuela Brusadelli, Ester D’Onofrio,Alessandro Zennaro, Giulio Cesare Zavattini, and Margherita Lang declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Experiment Participants

The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Sapienza University of Rome and was performed in accordance with the ethical standards of the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki. Participation was voluntary and all participants signed an informed consent form prior to taking part in the study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Turin, Italy

    Luciano Giromini & Alessandro Zennaro

  2. Department of Pedagogy, Psychology, Philosophy, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy

    Gaia de Campora

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milano-Bicocca, Italy

    Emanuela Brusadelli & Margherita Lang

  4. Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

    Ester D’Onofrio & Giulio Cesare Zavattini

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  1. Luciano Giromini
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  2. Gaia de Campora
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Correspondence to Luciano Giromini.

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Giromini, L., de Campora, G., Brusadelli, E. et al. Validity and Reliability of the Interpersonal Competence Questionnaire: Empirical Evidence from an Italian Study. J Psychopathol Behav Assess 38, 113–123 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-015-9499-5

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