Paranoia in the General Population : a revised version of the General Paranoia Scale for Adults

Background: Paranoid ideation has been regarded as a cognitive and a social process used as a defence against perceived threats. According to this perspective, paranoid ideation can be understood as a process extending across the normal-pathological continuum. Methods: In order to refine the construct of paranoid ideation and to validate a measure of paranoia, 906 Portuguese participants from the general population and 91 patients were administered the General Paranoia Scale (GPS), and two conceptual models (one - and tridimensional) were compared through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Results: Results from the CFA of the GPS confirmed a different model than the one-dimensional model proposed by Fenigstein and Vanable, which com-prised three dimensions (mistrust thoughts, persecutory ideas, and self-deprecation). This alternative model presented a better fit and increased sensitivity when compared with the one-dimensional model. Further data analysis of the scale revealed that the GPS is an adequate assessment tool for adults, with good psychometric characteristics and high internal consistency. Conclusion: The model proposed in the current work leads to further refinements and enrichment of the construct of paranoia in different populations, allowing the assessment of three dimensions of paranoia and the risk of clinical paranoia in a single measure for the general population.

Geographical, temporal and environmental determinants of bryophyte species richness in the Macaronesian Islands

Copyright: © 2014 Aranda et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Temporal and spatial variability of fin whale's (Balaenoptera physalus) distribution in the Pelagos Sanctuary: Northwestern Mediterranean Sea

Dissertação de Mestrado, Estudos Integrados dos Oceanos, 20 de Março de 2014, Universidade dos Açores.

Temporal variation in reproductive phenology of Patella spp.: past and present.

World Congress of Malacology, Universidade dos Açores, Ponta Delgada, 21-28 de julho.

Role of the wider Azores region as a nursery ground for North Atlantic blue shark (Prionace glauca)

Tese de Doutoramento, Ciências do Mar (Ecologia Marinha)

Optimal strategies for marine wildlife tourism in small islands

Tese de Doutoramento, Ciências Económicas e Empresariais (especialidade de Economia), 18 de Junho de 2015, Universidade dos Açores

Effects of natural mortality on the yield per recruit models

Dissertação de Mestrado, Estudos Integrados dos Oceanos, 22 de Janeiro de 2016, Universidade dos Açores.