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.
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},
}