Development of an empirically constructed Psychosis Proneness Scale on the Personality Inventory for Children - Second Edition (PIC-2)

Maria Klara, Pace University

Abstract

This study attempted to develop a Psychosis Proneness Scale (PSYP) by utilizing empirically-keyed methods to determine which combination of the 275 items differentiate children with psychosis from two other groups: (1) children with other psychiatric conditions and (2) children with neurological conditions. Results indicated that although a new 17-item PSYP scale could be developed, it failed to show significant improvement over the RLT (from the Personality Inventory for Children - Second Edition) scale in its diagnostic ability to correctly identify children with psychosis. The RLT was significantly related to the presence of psychosis in the sample used for scale development as well as in the scale used for cross validation (AUC = .614 and AUC = .699, respectively). Given that group size was somewhat smaller than the original aim of the study, an explorative step was also conducted to see if utilization of a large sample size would yield more significant results. This scale, PSYP-A, was found to be significantly related to the presence of psychotic symptoms (AUC = .789). Item analysis was also conducted in all of the developed scales and comparisons were made to the RLT scale. Limitations and additional directions for future research were discussed, as the relevance of this current study within the field of school-clinical child psychology.

Subject Area

Clinical psychology|Quantitative psychology

Recommended Citation

Klara, Maria, "Development of an empirically constructed Psychosis Proneness Scale on the Personality Inventory for Children - Second Edition (PIC-2)" (2009). ETD Collection for Pace University. AAI3374255.
https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/dissertations/AAI3374255

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