The Assessment of Schizotypy and Its Clinical Relevance
The Assessment of Schizotypy and Its Clinical Relevance
This article reviews several approaches to assessing schizotypal traits using a wide variety of self-report and interview measures. It makes a distinction between clinical approaches largely based on syndrome and symptom definitions, and psychometric approaches to measuring personality traits. The review presents a brief description of the content and psychometric properties of both sets of measures; these cover both the broad rubric of schizotypy often, but not exclusively based on DSM conceptions, as well as measures with a more specific focus. Measurement of schizotypy has taken place within clinical and nonclinical research utilizing a range of designs and methodologies. Several of these are elucidated with respect to the assessment choices open to researchers, and the implications of the measures chosen. These paradigms include the case–control study, "high risk"/"ultra-high risk" groups, a variety of nonclinical groups and other groups of interest, large scale epidemiology and "in vivo" designs. Evidence from a wide variety of designs continues to provide evidence of the validity of both clinical and personality approaches to schizotypal assessment.
Over the past 40 years, the theoretical ideas subsumed within the schizotypy rubric have been operationalized in a variety of interview and self-report measures. These vary in important ways both in terms of the concepts they seek to encapsulate (single "symptoms" or broader constellations), as well as the view taken of the constellation of features comprising schizotypy, or more broadly psychosis proneness. The broadest distinction theoretically is between measurement approaches seeking a clinical, dichotomous content more akin to psychiatric assessment, and those designed to assess broad personality traits in a continuous fashion. My objective here is to help the interested reader understand the range of issues pertaining to measurement so as to make their own informed choices, rather than to advocate a particular measure or measures. Different measures are appropriate to different needs—populations, research questions, statistical treatments, and so forth. The article discusses some widely used questionnaires from both the "clinical" and "personality" tradition; and then outline a number of research paradigms that together form a "how to do" guide. My own view is that both traditions have valuable contributions to offer, and that a "dualist" model embracing both categorical and continuum approaches is the most plausible, and supported by much evidence. Lastly, this is not intended to be an exhaustive guide: the full list of published measures is very lengthy and many have fallen out of common use or are so recent as to not have received widespread use to date. While there may be important omissions, I have concentrated on measures in current widespread use, though many of these have items taken from earlier measures.
Abstract and Introduction
Abstract
This article reviews several approaches to assessing schizotypal traits using a wide variety of self-report and interview measures. It makes a distinction between clinical approaches largely based on syndrome and symptom definitions, and psychometric approaches to measuring personality traits. The review presents a brief description of the content and psychometric properties of both sets of measures; these cover both the broad rubric of schizotypy often, but not exclusively based on DSM conceptions, as well as measures with a more specific focus. Measurement of schizotypy has taken place within clinical and nonclinical research utilizing a range of designs and methodologies. Several of these are elucidated with respect to the assessment choices open to researchers, and the implications of the measures chosen. These paradigms include the case–control study, "high risk"/"ultra-high risk" groups, a variety of nonclinical groups and other groups of interest, large scale epidemiology and "in vivo" designs. Evidence from a wide variety of designs continues to provide evidence of the validity of both clinical and personality approaches to schizotypal assessment.
Introduction
Over the past 40 years, the theoretical ideas subsumed within the schizotypy rubric have been operationalized in a variety of interview and self-report measures. These vary in important ways both in terms of the concepts they seek to encapsulate (single "symptoms" or broader constellations), as well as the view taken of the constellation of features comprising schizotypy, or more broadly psychosis proneness. The broadest distinction theoretically is between measurement approaches seeking a clinical, dichotomous content more akin to psychiatric assessment, and those designed to assess broad personality traits in a continuous fashion. My objective here is to help the interested reader understand the range of issues pertaining to measurement so as to make their own informed choices, rather than to advocate a particular measure or measures. Different measures are appropriate to different needs—populations, research questions, statistical treatments, and so forth. The article discusses some widely used questionnaires from both the "clinical" and "personality" tradition; and then outline a number of research paradigms that together form a "how to do" guide. My own view is that both traditions have valuable contributions to offer, and that a "dualist" model embracing both categorical and continuum approaches is the most plausible, and supported by much evidence. Lastly, this is not intended to be an exhaustive guide: the full list of published measures is very lengthy and many have fallen out of common use or are so recent as to not have received widespread use to date. While there may be important omissions, I have concentrated on measures in current widespread use, though many of these have items taken from earlier measures.
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