Assessment of psychosis proneness in African-American college students

The present study employed the psychometric high-risk method to investigate psychosis proneness in African-American and Caucasian college students recruited from three sites. The goals of the study were to develop norms for African-American students on the Perceptual Aberration (Chapman, Chapman, & Raulin, 1978), Magical Ideation (Eckblad & Chapman, 1983), Revised Social Anhedonia (Eckblad, Chapman, Chapman, & Mishlove, 1982), and Physical Anhedonia Scales (Chapman, Chapman, & Raulin, 1976), as well as to assess the validity of this research method with African-American students. Structured diagnostic interviews were conducted to assess the concurrent validity of these scales for identifying psychosis proneness. The results supported the use of separate norms for male and female African-American students and provided support for the concurrent validity of this research method with African-American and Caucasian college students.