Factor structure of the everyday memory questionnaire

Although the Everyday Memory Questionnaire (EMQ) has been used in numerous studies, no factor structure has yet been obtained from a reasonably large sample of non-clinical participants. The 28-item revised version of the EMQ was administered to 277 undergraduate students. Analysis showed five clear factors: retrieval, task monitoring, conversational monitoring, spatial memory, and memory for activities. In general, the factors appeared to reflect underlying memory processes rather than just similarities among test items, which suggested that using and developing tests of this kind might provide a means of studying the diversity of everyday memory phenomena in a unified fashion that would complement laboratory research. Issues about the nature of 'absent-mindedness' and the relationship between prospective and retrospective memory were discussed. Understanding the factor structure of the EMQ should also be useful in clinical applications of the test.