Synthesis:Psychometric and clinical scales

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Scales and questionnaires relevant for emergence research, assessment for personalizing practice or therapeutic purposes are numerous. This page aims to list scales which taken together cover the full range of emergent phenomena, experiences, and effects, provide their items and instructions of use when available, compile, and conduct critical review. This is not a comprehensive list but should be a reasonable ground for our purposes, particularly regarding "state" scales (see below).

The five mainly used scales in the context of "altered-states" research across emergent modalities, are the 5 Dimensions Altered State of Consciousness Questionnaire (5D-ASC), the similar 11 Dimensions Altered State of Consciousness Questionnaire (11D-ASC), the Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory (PCI), the Hallucinogen Rating Scale (HRS), and the Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ),[1] and these have been compiled to structure recent compendia such as the "altered states database". While such approaches are similar to the one advocated for by the EPRC Phenomenology project, it should be noted that, in order to produce high-quality, broad, cross-modal typologies of emergent phenomena, more refined instruments are likely needed.

While structured interviews (i.e. questionnaires and scales) may be useful to researcher and some practitioners, and are often needed in the context of costly trials, as in-depth interviews are somewhat costly, though less so than things like cerebral imaging, there are often limitations to what they can do in terms of nuance, adequacy, phenomenological depth and precision, a fact which can be obscured by the mathematical rigor of statistical methods used to validate them. We touch on some of these limitations in the first section below.

A word of caution

Meditative and phenomenological expertise

The question of the phenomenological expertise of the subjects and/or researchers — that is to say, the expertise in verbally describing experiences at the pre-reflexive level — is rarely addressed in existing outcomes research, although it is a central topic in phenomenological research.[2] Thus, it is difficult to know if different people mean the same thing by e.g. "altered sense of identity" or "body parts disappearing" when they are responding "yes" to such a question, and what their degree of phenomenological expertise is.

It is also common for research involving scales graded on a 7-point likert scale, to be considered as quantitative research, because statistical analyses are then conducted on the scores obtained. However, one should not forget that the original "data" is in fact qualitative, meaning they are subjective reports, and often there is no discernable method to make sure that the person's assessments are accurate. Generally speaking, there is thus a risk for outcomes research using scales or qualitative data with no methods to bypass the subject's or the interviewer's pre-existing beliefs, biases, judgments, and theories about their own experience, to (1) obtain biased descriptions (e.g. a person describes their experience using words that do not reflect what they actually lived, (2) analyze qualitative descriptions in a misleading way by superimposing one's own theories, (3) overlook aspects (sometimes many, and sometimes important) of the information contained in the description, (4) induce content.

In the case of meditation research, the question of the meditative expertise of subjects is rarely addressed, but it plays a crucial role. It takes training to become adept at adequately describing experiences without filtering them through pre-interpretations, theories, vernacular language, or beliefs.[3] Furthermore, practitioners with advanced insights may find that the way questions are formulated or the views that underly some formulations, are not sufficient to capture the nuances and depths of their perspectives and experiences.

Quality of research

It follows that clinical or qualitative research on Emergent Phenomena is often of relatively low quality, with many studies using structured questionnaire-type approaches, which as we saw are often quite "inductive" of content, imprecise, and general. Further, structured interviews are often a reflection of the researcher's own phenomenological expectations and interpretations and wording which may not always adequately reflect a person's actual unique experience. Though they allow "quantitative" analysis (statistical methods can be used on questionnaire responses), they rarely provide rich phenomenological descriptions.

Many studies do not at all address the question of distinguishing between "experience" and "interpretation" — which a crucial distinction in phenomenological research that was stressed even by early attempts like in Stace's work on mystical experiences. They rarely include procedures to attempt to bypass this (i.e., to induce a state of épochè or suspension of preconceptions and interpretations in their subjects[4]), and much less so for the researchers themselves. This stands in stark contrast with methods such as the micro-phenomenological interview, which should be considered of higher phenomenological quality, as they (1) avoid suggesting content; (2) induce a state of épochè in both the interviewer and interviewee; (3) explore the fine, pre-reflexive details of specific experiences in great depth, and (4) only later, after having explored specific experiences with several interviewees, proceed  at attempting to identify structural invariants in individual descriptions and then general structures.[5][6] Questionnaire items based on such in-depth phenomenological descriptions could be developed and would probably be of much higher quality.

Randomized-controlled trials (RCTs) in particular are often not the best in terms of phenomenology, their analysis is often stereotypical and lacks subtlety, as they typically employ psychometric scales as outcome measures. In such cases, we learn little about the actual phenomenology of the experiences of the study participants, since a scale is a predetermined binary yes/no phenomenological matrix. This makes some sense as RCTs are about testing causal hypotheses and thus need simple categories that can be quantified and subjected to various statistical methods. However, it seems to us that many of the psychometric instruments used in such research lack phenomenological subtlety and depth. Reviewing existing scales and showing the limitations that affect most of them would be an interesting project to take on, especially because clinical trials for novel agents are currently being conducted mostly using such questionnaires.

That being said, here are some instruments, divided into those which focus on specific "states" or experience types, those which focus on psychological "traits" or personal characteristics, and then more general questionnaires.

State scales

Trait scales

Relevant trait scales depend on what research is being conducted, and this list could be vastly expanded. However this covers some interesting predisposing and other kinds of factors.

  • Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire
  • Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility Form A
  • Inventory of Secular/Spiritual Wakefulness
  • Iowa Interview for Partial Seizure-like Symptoms
  • Metacognitive Processes of Decentering Scale — Trait
  • Metapersonal Self Scale
  • Modified Tellegen Absorption Scale
  • Multidimensional Schizotypy Scale — Brief
  • Questionnaire for the Evaluation of the Fluidity of Consciousness
  • The Transliminality Scale Revised

General and other scales

  • Appraisals of Anomalous Experiences Interview
  • Attitudes Related to Spirituality Scale
  • Bidirectional Spirituality Scale
  • Defense Mechanisms Rating Scales
  • FAD-Plus
  • Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy - Spiritual Well-Being
  • Metaphysical Beliefs Questionnaire
  • Psychometric Validation and Translation of Religious and Spiritual Measures
  • Spiritual and Religious Dimensions Scale
  • Spirituality Assessment Scale
  • Spiritual Climate Scale
  • Spiritual Meaning Scale
  • Spirituality Scale
  • Spiritual Supporter Scale
  • Spiritual Transcendence Scale
  • Spiritual Wellbeing Scale
  • Spiritual Wellbeing Scale Meta-Analysis

References

  1. ↑ Prugger, J., Derdiyok, E., Dinkelacker, J., Costines, C., & Schmidt, T. T. (2022). The Altered States Database: Psychometric data from a systematic literature review. Scientific Data, 9(1), 720. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01822-4
  2. ↑ Sandilands, O., & Ingram, D. M. (2024). Documenting and defining emergent phenomenology: theoretical foundations for an extensive research strategy. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, 1340335. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1340335
  3. ↑ Petitmengin, C., Beek, M. V., Bitbol, M., Nissou, J.-M., & Roepstorff, A. (2017). Que vit le méditant ? Méthodes et enjeux d’une description micro-phénoménologique de l’expérience méditative. [What is it like to meditate?: methods and issues for a micro-phenomenological description of meditative experience.]. Intellectica. Revue de l’Association pour la Recherche Cognitive, 67(1), 219–242. https://doi.org/10.3406/intel.2017.1843
  4. ↑ Bitbol, M. (2019). Consciousness, Being and Life: Phenomenological Approaches to Mindfulness. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 50(2), 127–161. https://doi.org/10.1163/15691624-12341360
  5. ↑ Petitmengin, C. (2006). Describing one’s subjective experience in the second person: An interview method for the science of consciousness. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 5(3–4), 229–269. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-006-9022-2
  6. ↑ Petitmengin, C., Remillieux, A., & Valenzuela-Moguillansky, C. (2019). Discovering the structures of lived experience: Towards a micro-phenomenological analysis method. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 18(4), 691–730. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-018-9597-4
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