Experiential scoring for the waterloo-stanford group c scale

Abstract

A scale is presented that assesses subjective experiences associated with the test suggestions contained in the Waterloo-Stanford Group C scale (WSGC), a group adaptation of the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale: Form (SHSS:C). This scale, along with the standard behavioral scoring system of the WSGC, was given to 926 students at the University of Connecticut. Normative data from this sample indicate that the experiential scoring scale is both reliable and valid as a measure of suggestibility. It is suggested that it may be useful to supplement behavioral scoring with experiential scoring when the WSGC is used.

Portuguese Norms for the Waterloo-Stanford Group C (WSGC) Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility

“…Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient was .62 in the Portuguese sample and .67 in the SHU sample. Reliability coefficient in the reference samples are .70 as reported by Kirsch et al (1998) and .80 and .81 on two samples as reported by Bowers (1998).…”

“…t tests (alpha = .05) revealed that significantly more females than males passed suggestions for taste hallucination, arm immobilization, age regression, music hallucination, negative visual hallucination, and amnesia, all with small effect sizes (SMD < 0.31). Kirsch, Milling, and Burgess (1998) also reported females' total mean scores as being significantly higher (M = 5.97; SD = 3.00) than males' total mean scores (M = 5.42; SD = 2.89). On our North American sample, however, this difference was not statistically significant.…”

“…Mean scores for the Portuguese and North American samples are presented in Table 1, which also includes data from two reference samples (Bowers, 1993;Kirsch et al, 1998). Portuguese participants scored lower than SHU participants, t(851) = 2.59, p = .01, but the magnitude of the difference was very small (standardized mean difference = 0.20).…”

“…To ensure a very high degree of consistency in the administration of the scale, we compare the data of the Portuguese sample with a North American sample collected 1 year earlier at a North American university by the same experimenter, following the same protocol for administration and score rating. Data are also compared with a large reference sample of almost 1000 individuals from the United States (Kirsch, Milling, & Burgess, 1998) and the original Canadian normative study conducted at the University of Waterloo (UWaterloo; Bowers, 1993).…”

“…For this suggestion, instead of placing three balls on a wood platform on the floor, we placed three 20 × 20 cm colored squares on a 60 × 90 cm board. This followed the procedure used in the Seton Hall University (SHU) and University of Connecticut (UConn; Kirsch et al, 1998) comparison samples and was done so that the stimuli would be more easily visible to all participants.…”