Objective: Emotion is essential in psychiatrists' clinical decision-making in conducting forensic psychiatric evaluations. However, psychiatrists may not be aware of their own emotions and thus prone to the risk of bias in their evaluations. An English version questionnaire was previously developed to assess emotional response and regulation. This study aims to assess the validity and reliability of the translated and adapted Indonesian version of The Multidimensional Emotion Questionnaire (MEQ) among Indonesian general psychiatrists in forensic psychiatry settings.
Method: This is a cross-sectional study that translated and adapted The Multidimensional Emotion Questionnaire (MEQ) designed by Klonsky et al. This study was conducted between August 2020 and February 2021, involving 32 general psychiatrists across the country who represented general psychiatrists from different educational backgrounds, clinical experiences, and workplace settings. The translation process was done by a certified independent translator and tested for validity by Item-Level Content Validity Index (I-CVI), Scale-Level Level Content Validity Index (S-CVI), and corrected item-total correlation. Cronbach's alpha values measured reliability aspects.
Results: The MEQ was valid and reliable, with an I-CVI score of 0.97-1, an S-CVI score of 0.99, and Cronbach's alpha values of 0.85-0.98 for each emotion. The majority of items had a corrected item-total correlation of higher than 0.30.
Conclusion: A proper and available tool to measure general psychiatrists' emotions in evaluating forensic psychiatric cases is essential in enhancing evaluators' awareness of their own emotions to eventually mitigate bias. The Multidimensional Emotion Questionnaire (MEQ) was valid and reliable for Indonesian forensic psychiatry contexts.
Keywords: Emotion; Forensic psychiatry cases; General psychiatrists; Reliability; Validity.
© 2023 The Authors.