The Metacognitions Questionnaire-Insomnia (MCQ-I) and the Thought Control Questionnaire Insomnia-Revised (TCQI-R)
Enrico Sella, Giuliano De Min Tona, Rossana De Beni
According to Wells’s metacognitive approach (2012), phenomena of rumination and worry, caused by
Cognitive-Attentional Syndrome (CAS), occur in insomnia and are responsible for the distress that
causes difficulty in sleeping.
This research offers the Italian adaptation of two questionnaires which investigate the metacognitive
aspects associated with sleep: the Thought Control Questionnaire-Revised Insomnia, TCQI-R (Ree et al.,
2005) and the Metacognitions Questionnaire Insomnia, MCQ-I (Waine, Broomfield, Banham & Espie,
2009).
The questionnaires were translated into Italian and administered to 200 students of the University
of Padua, together with other self-report instruments which evaluated the presence of insomnia
symptoms, sleep quality, anxiety, depression and arousability. In addition, it assessed the ability of the
two metacognitive questionnaires in discriminating people with sleep problems from good sleepers.
As regards the TCQI-R, a factorial structure with five factors emerged, which is different to the original
version of Ree et al. (2005), and 7 items were deleted, while for the MCQ-I a factorial structure with
two components was revealed compared to the monofactorial one obtained from Waine et al. in 2009,
and a reduction from 60 to 41 items occurred. The two factors of MCQ-I and the three factors in the
TCQI-R discriminated insomniacs from good sleepers.
From this study we can conclude that the instruments discriminate insomniacs from good sleepers, but
their structure only partially agrees with the original.
Keywords
Metacognition, Questionnaires, Metacognitive beliefs, Thought control strategies,
Insomnia.