The Community Assessment of Psychic Experiences-Positive scale (CAPE-P15) accurately classifies and differentiates psychotic experience levels in adolescents from the general population
📄 Original study ↗Plain English Summary
This study tested a 15-question survey called the CAPE-P15 on nearly 1,600 Chilean teenagers. It measures psychosis-spectrum experiences -- hearing or seeing things that aren't there, paranoid thoughts, feeling controlled by outside forces. Using Item Response Theory (a technique for figuring out which questions do the heavy lifting), they found the scale impressively reliable and best at detecting moderate-to-high levels of unusual experiences. Items about hallucinations and external control were the sharpest tools in the box. For psi research, this matters because the scale screens whether people reporting anomalous experiences might be on the psychosis spectrum -- a useful checkpoint for telepathy and precognition studies.
Actual Paper Abstract
Background There is increasing interest in studying psychotic symptoms in non-clinical populations, with the Community Assessment of Psychic Experiences-Positive scale (CAPE-P15) being one of the self-screening questionnaires used most commonly for this purpose. Further research is needed to evaluate the ability of the scale to accurately identify and classify positive psychotic experiences (PE) in the general population. Aim To provide psychometric evidence about the accuracy of the CAPE-P15 for detecting PE in a sample of Chilean adolescents from the general population and classifying them according to their PE severity levels. Method We administered the CAPE-P15 to a general sample of 1594 students aged 12 to 19. Based on Item Response Theory (IRT), we tested the accuracy of the instrument using two main parameters: difficulty and discrimination power of the 15 items. Results We found that the scale provides very accurate information about PE, particularly for high PE levels. The items with the highest capability to determine the presence of the latent trait were those assessing perceptual anomalies (auditory and visual hallucinations), bizarre experiences (a double has taken the place of others; being controlled by external forces), and persecutory ideation (conspiracy against me). Conclusions The CAPE-P15 is an accurate and suitable tool to screen PE and to accurately classify and differentiate PE levels in adolescents from the general population. Further research is needed to better understand how maladaptive psychological mechanisms influence relationships between PE and suicidal ideation (SI) in the general population.
Research Notes
The CAPE-P15 is used as a control measure in psi-adjacent research to assess psychosis-spectrum traits among anomalous experience reporters. This IRT validation in 1,594 adolescents clarifies which items best detect high PE levels—directly relevant to Dean et al. (2022) and similar studies. Note: catalog ID corrected from moseley_2021 (mislabeled) to nunez_2021.
Psychometric validation of the CAPE-P15—a 15-item self-report scale measuring psychosis-spectrum experiences (paranoid ideation, bizarre experiences, perceptual anomalies)—in 1,594 Chilean adolescents (ages 12–19). Using Item Response Theory, item discrimination parameters ranged from moderate (α=1.05) to very high (α=2.44); scale reliability was high (α=0.94, ω=0.81). Both unidimensional and hierarchical models fit acceptably; the test information function was most accurate between −1 and +2.5 SD. Items assessing auditory/visual hallucinations and being controlled by external forces showed highest discriminative power. Higher PE scores correlated significantly with depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, defeat, entrapment, and rumination.
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📋 Cite this paper
Núñez, D, Godoy, M. I, Gaete, J, Faúndez, M. J, Campos, S, Fresno, A, Spencer, R (2021). The Community Assessment of Psychic Experiences-Positive scale (CAPE-P15) accurately classifies and differentiates psychotic experience levels in adolescents from the general population. PLoS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0256686
@article{nunez_2021_cape_p15,
title = {The Community Assessment of Psychic Experiences-Positive scale (CAPE-P15) accurately classifies and differentiates psychotic experience levels in adolescents from the general population},
author = {Núñez, D and Godoy, M. I and Gaete, J and Faúndez, M. J and Campos, S and Fresno, A and Spencer, R},
year = {2021},
journal = {PLoS ONE},
doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0256686},
}