Psychometric validation of the survey of autobiographical memory: confirmatory factor analysis and network analysis

PICCO, SOLEDAD; PEDREIRA, MARIA E.; FERNÁNDEZ, RODRIGO S.

Memory

Taylor & Francis Group

Año: 2020 vol. 28 p. 1037 - 1050

0965-8211

Autobiographical memory (AM) represents the ability to remember personal experiences. Thereare several laboratory or neuropsychological tasks to assess different aspects of memoryfunction. However, there has been little research on self-reported AM ability. The Survey ofAutobiographical Memory (SAM) is a self-report questionnaire, developed to assess individualdifferences in AM. Evidence for the factor structure and network properties of the SAM is stillneeded. Here, using an integral approach, we validated the SAM using a MultipleCorrespondence Analysis (Study 1) as in the original study, a Confirmatory Factor Analysis(Study 2), and a Network Analysis (Study 3) using two large independent samples (total n =2896). We first replicated the original findings, then confirmed the existence of 4 factors andfound that the Episodic and Semantic categories were the most central ones. Finally, wefound between ?groups? differences for Gender and Anxiety. Overall, three different methodsrevealed a robust profile of the SAM.