The treatment was effective in reducing overweight and obesity, improving cardiovascular capacity and therefore the physical health of the participants.

Alexithymia refers to a specific disturbance in emotional processing that is manifested by difficulties in identifying and verbalizing feelings and a tendency to focus on and amplify the somatic sensations that accompany emotional arousal. Alexithymia is conceptualized both as an affect-deficit disorder and a continuous personality variable. The main purpose of the present study was to investigate the stability levels of alexithymia with regard to changes in emotional distress levels caused by university exams. We tested 20 university students at four different times, before and after the exams. Alexithymic features and self-reported emotional distress (trait anxiety and physical symptoms) were measured. Whereas emotional distress measures changed significantly during the diverse phases, the level of alexithymia remained unchanged. We therefore conclude that alexithymia represents a constant trait. Keywords: emotion, alexithymia, stress, anxiety La alexitimia describe un trastorno en el procesamiento emocional, manifestado mediante una marcada dificultad para identificar y expresar afectos, así como una tendencia a amplificar las sensaciones somáticas ligadas a la activación emocional. La alexitimia es conceptualizada tanto como un trastorno en la regulación afectiva, como una variable de personalidad. El principal objetivo de este trabajo es investigar la estabilidad temporal de los niveles de alexitimia en relación a los cambios experimentados en el malestar emocional causado por los exámenes universitarios. Evaluamos 20 universitarios en cuatro ocasiones diferentes, antes y después de los exámenes. Se evaluaron los niveles de alexitimia y de malestar emocional (ansiedad y sintomatología somática). Los resultados mostraron que mientras que las medidas de malestar emocional cambiaron significativamente durante las diversas fases, el grado de alexitimia permaneció inalterable. Se concluye afirmando que la alexitimia constituye un rasgo estable de personalidad.

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These results provide evidence supporting the construct validity of the QoL-AD Scale. This instrument seems to measure the perception of two related constructs (behavioral competence and environment) and could be used together with instruments measuring psychological well-being and the perception of health.

This article presents a unifying approach to the analysis of repeated univariate categorical (ordered) responses based on the application of the generalized log-linear modeling framework proposed by Lang and Agresti. It is shown that three important research questions in longitudinal studies can be addressed simultaneously. These questions are the following: What is the overall dependence structure of the repeated responses? What is the structure of the change between consecutive time points? and What is the structure of the change in the marginal distributions? Each of these questions involves specifying log-linear models for different marginal distributions of the multiway cross classification of the responses. The proposed approach is illustrated by means of two real data examples.