043-22 – Measures of Hallucination Proneness in a Saudi Sample Using Launay-Slade Hallucinations Scale-Extended – online survey

Hallucinations exist when an individual experiences unreal sensory events without the existence of a physical external stimuli, while these are perceived as a real experience. Although commonly exist with schizophrenia, hallucinations are also experienced by healthy individuals, who have never been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder. Launay-Slade Hallucination Scale Extended Version (LSHS-E), a valid measure for hallucination-proneness, has been adapted and tested by several languages. This study aims to find out whether people in Saudi Arabia respond to the questionnaire in a way that is comparable with respondents from other cultures.
The scale was distributed online through the Qualtrics Platform after it was translated into Arabic and back translated to English. Cronbach’s alpha was used to assess the reliability of Arabic LSHS-E. For factor structure, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to test whether the data fit into the most often reported four-factor structure of LSHS-E.
After excluding participants who reported taking drugs, drinking alcohol, psychological or neurological disorders, 428 responses from the Saudi general population were included. The Arabic LSHS-E demonstrated an excellent internal consistency, Cronbach’s alpha of 0.916; 95% CI: 0.904 to .927. As expected, a 4-factor model, that assign items (1, 2, 3) to “intrusive thoughts” factor, items (5,6,7) to “vivid daydreams” factor, items (11, 12, 13, 14, 15) to “multisensory HLEs” factor, and items (4, 8,9,10,16) to “auditory and visual HLEs” factor, exhibited the best fit.
The results were comparable to what was shown on previous studies in which the multidimensionality of hallucination-like experiences were characterized by the four-factor structure model, and the commonly reported hallucinatory experiences in this sample is ‘intrusive thoughts’, in line with the Indian study. We can conclude that the Arabic LSHS-E version is a robust evaluating measure for HLEs in Saudi Arabia.