Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire

[Cat King Cole]

What number range do you have to be in order to be considered schizotypal and what low number range do you have to be in order to be considered hallucinatory/creative/daydreamy?

The test can't diagnose you. The number I recall is >32 is grounds for looking into a diagnosis if the individual is impaired beyond functioning (ideally; but we all know how poorly ideals fare in the real world).

The other use of the test is investigating characteristics of schizotypy. There's a whole lot of research if you google around for journals and things, really interesting.

I second what snorekill says. You shouldn't take these self-tests too seriously, depending on one's state of mind at the taking of the test and how their life is at the moment, one can get very different results. It's also easy to score low or high on these tests if that's what you subconsciously want as the result.

This test isn't one of "those" tests though, it's a psychological instrument. The questions are all neutral self-reports of objective characteristics ("People sometimes find it hard to understand what I am saying") and subjective psychotic experiences ("When you look at a person, or yourself in a mirror, have you ever seen the face change right before your eyes?"), hence the high consistency of scores between retests. Check out that paper abstract I linked, it's interesting.

I disagree though that it's easy to score high if part of you wants to. The questions can almost all be objectified based on others' reports, and the subjective reports are all concrete. Has anyone ever said I'm difficult to follow? Yeah. Have I ever looked at something and seen it change size? Yeah, kind of hard to miss that happening.

Since you're fond of rough evaluations, my favourite one when something doesn't seem to line up to me is thus: "This is science; have people more competent than me raised any criticisms?" As a lay person you're not in a strong position to adequately evaluate the research of people with more experience than you, it's as simple as that. As a fellow seeker, I think the best thing we can do is look at the existing criticisms and contrary positions and come to our own conclusions from there.

[Simon Ssmall]

Ideas of reference 0 out of 9 Unsure 1
Excessive social anxiety 0 out of 8 Unsure 0
Odd beliefs or magical thinking 0.5 out of 7 Unsure 0
Unusual perceptual experiences 0 out of 9 Unsure 0
Odd or eccentric behavior 0 out of 7 Unsure 0
No close friends 0.5 out of 9 Unsure 0
Odd speech 2 out of 9 Unsure 0
Constricted affect 0 out of 8 Unsure 0
Suspiciousness 0.5 out of 8 Unsure 0
Total SPQ-A 3.5 out of 74

[Creepy-pokeball]

As a lay person you're not in a strong position to adequately evaluate the research of people with more experience than you, it's as simple as that. As a fellow seeker, I think the best thing we can do is look at the existing criticisms and contrary positions and come to our own conclusions from there.

That is a logical fallacy that falls into many illogical tangents.

[Raver]

This test isn't one of "those" tests though, it's a psychological instrument. The questions are all neutral self-reports of objective characteristics ("People sometimes find it hard to understand what I am saying") and subjective psychotic experiences ("When you look at a person, or yourself in a mirror, have you ever seen the face change right before your eyes?"), hence the high consistency of scores between retests. Check out that paper abstract I linked, it's interesting.

I disagree though that it's easy to score high if part of you wants to. The questions can almost all be objectified based on others' reports, and the subjective reports are all concrete. Has anyone ever said I'm difficult to follow? Yeah. Have I ever looked at something and seen it change size? Yeah, kind of hard to miss that happening.

Since you're fond of rough evaluations, my favourite one when something doesn't seem to line up to me is thus: "This is science; have people more competent than me raised any criticisms?" As a lay person you're not in a strong position to adequately evaluate the research of people with more experience than you, it's as simple as that. As a fellow seeker, I think the best thing we can do is look at the existing criticisms and contrary positions and come to our own conclusions from there.

My main point is that its not the test itself that is invalid, but the fact that the individual itself has the potential to produce biased results. It's a form of cognitive bias, but more specifically Confirmation bias, you can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias. This is essentially accepting any information that coincides with your current belief system even if its wrong. It could also manifest in test taking where you answer in such a way to get the desired result you want. This is why self-tests are unreliable, they are the polygraph tests of psychology if not worse and shouldn't be used as a reliable means of indicating anything.

If I wanted to, I could of gotten a very low score on this test to appear as normal as possible, but I answered honestly instead because I wanted to see the truth and not lie to myself and others. This quote explains your current mind set at this time and other instances when you defended something that turned out to be wrong: "Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons." I would't rule out that you might be schizotypal, but you should look to a professional psychiatrist for confirmation and not an online test.