The Stanford Hypnotic Clinical Scale for Adults

TLDR

The authors developed a concise 5‑item hypnotic responsiveness scale for patients who find standard scales too long, uninteresting, or tiring. They selected five items (hand movement, dream, age regression, posthypnotic suggestion, and amnesia), administered the scale to 111 undergraduates alongside the 12‑point Stanford Scale in balanced order, and estimated reliability via the correlation between the two scales. The scale showed no order effects, a .72 correlation with the Stanford Scale, and takes about 20 minutes to administer.

Abstract

Abstract A short scale for the measurement of hypnotic responsiveness was constructed for use with patients for whom the standard scales might prove too long, too uninteresting, or too tiring. Five items were selected: moving hands together, a dream, age regression, a posthypnotic suggestion, and posthypnotic amnesia. A sample of 111 university undergraduates, selected from the full range of scores (0–10) on a shortened 10-point version of the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A, was given the 5-point clinical scale and the 12-point Stanford Hypnotic Scale, Form C in balanced order. There were no order effects. A reliability estimate for the clinical scale was obtained from the product-moment correlation between the total scores on the two scales. This correlation was .72. The clinical scale requires approximately 20 minutes for administration.