Abstract
The Cardiff anomalous perceptions scale (CAPS) has been recently designed for the assessment of anomalous perceptual experiences
in the general population, and includes dimensions that measure distress, intrusiveness, and frequency. The purpose of this
study was to assess the psychometric properties of a Taiwanese version of the CAPS. The English version of the CAPS was translated
into Taiwanese (CAPS-T) and the latter was applied to this study. We administered the questionnaire to a consecutive sample
of 192 participants with (n = 106; clinical group including schizophrenia and affective psychosis) or without psychotic disorders (n = 86; non-clinical group). In addition to the CAPS-T, the Taiwanese version of the brief psychiatric symptom rating scale
(BSRS) measured the severity of the psychopathology. We also tested the psychometric properties of the CAPS-T including construct
validity, internal consistency, test–retest reliability, and convergent and discriminative validity. Overall, the CAPS-T showed
good construct validity, internal consistency, and stability over time and correlated significantly with the psychoticism
subscale of the BSRS. As predicted, the mean differences in CAPS-T scores between participants with or without a psychotic
disorder were significant. Convergent and discriminative validity were satisfactory. A score of 5 was found to the best threshold
in discriminating between clinical and non-clinical samples. Our findings indicate that the Taiwanese version of the CAPS
is a reliable and valid instrument to measure the multidimensionality of perceptual anomalies in general and appears to complement
the clinical measures of psychosis proneness in Taiwan.
in the general population, and includes dimensions that measure distress, intrusiveness, and frequency. The purpose of this
study was to assess the psychometric properties of a Taiwanese version of the CAPS. The English version of the CAPS was translated
into Taiwanese (CAPS-T) and the latter was applied to this study. We administered the questionnaire to a consecutive sample
of 192 participants with (n = 106; clinical group including schizophrenia and affective psychosis) or without psychotic disorders (n = 86; non-clinical group). In addition to the CAPS-T, the Taiwanese version of the brief psychiatric symptom rating scale
(BSRS) measured the severity of the psychopathology. We also tested the psychometric properties of the CAPS-T including construct
validity, internal consistency, test–retest reliability, and convergent and discriminative validity. Overall, the CAPS-T showed
good construct validity, internal consistency, and stability over time and correlated significantly with the psychoticism
subscale of the BSRS. As predicted, the mean differences in CAPS-T scores between participants with or without a psychotic
disorder were significant. Convergent and discriminative validity were satisfactory. A score of 5 was found to the best threshold
in discriminating between clinical and non-clinical samples. Our findings indicate that the Taiwanese version of the CAPS
is a reliable and valid instrument to measure the multidimensionality of perceptual anomalies in general and appears to complement
the clinical measures of psychosis proneness in Taiwan.
- Content Type Journal Article
- Category Original Paper
- Pages 1-21
- DOI 10.1007/s11126-012-9234-2
- Authors
- Yu-Chen Kao, Department of Psychiatry, Songshan Armed Forces General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC
- Tzong-Shi Wang, Department of Psychiatry, Taipei Tzu Chi General Hospital, New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC
- Chien-Wen Lu, Department of Psychiatry, Songshan Armed Forces General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan, ROC
- Yia-Ping Liu, Department of Physiology and Biophysics, National Defense Medical Center, No. 161, Section 6, Min-Chuan East Road, Taipei, 114 Taiwan, ROC
- Journal Psychiatric Quarterly
- Online ISSN 1573-6709
- Print ISSN 0033-2720