The revised transliminality scale: reliability and validity data from a Rasch top-down purification procedure.
Consciousness and cognition December 1, 2000 R Lange, M A Thalbourne, J Houran et al.
A revised 17-item Transliminality Scale (RTS) corrects age and gender biases in the original 29-item version, is unidimensional by a Rasch criterion, and has a reliability of 0.82. The scale defines a probabilistic hierarchy of items addressing magical ideation, mystical experience, absorption, hyperaesthesia, manic experience, dream interpretation, and fantasy proneness. These findings validate William James's and Thalbourne's suggestions that some mental phenomena share a common underlying dimension with selected sensory experiences. Low scores correlate with "tough mindedness," "self-control," and "rule consciousness" on the Cattell 16PF test, while high scores associate with "abstractedness" and "openness to change." An independent validation study confirmed predictions implied by the definition of transliminality.