Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Psychiatry Research journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/psychres The Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire-Brief lacks measurement invariance across three countries Shujuan Liu a , David Mellor a , Mathew Ling a , José L. Saiz b , Eugenia V. Vinet b , Xiaoyan Xu c , Solomon Renati d , Linda K. Byrne a, ⁎ a Deakin University, Geelong, School of Psychology, Australia b Departamento de Psicologia, Universidad de La Frontera, Francisco Salazar 1145, Temuco, Chile c Sichuan Normal University, 5 Jing'an Rd, Jinjiang, Chengdu, People’s Republic of China d Karmaveer Bhaurao Patil College, Vashi, Thane, Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra 400703, India ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Schizotypy Schizotypal Cross-cultural Invariance Factor structure Psychometric properties ABSTRACT The Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire-Brief (SPQ-B) is a commonly-used tool for measuring schizotypal personality traits and due to its wide application, its cross-cultural validity is of interest. Previous studies suggest that the SPQ-B either has a three- or four-factor structure, but the majority of studies have been conducted in Western contexts and little is known about the psychometric properties of the scale in other populations. In this study factorial invariance testing across three cultural contexts–Australia, China and Chile was conducted. In total, 729 young adults (Mean age = 23.99 years, SD = 9.87 years) participated. Invariance testing did not support the four-factor model across three countries. Confirmatory Factor Analyses revealed that neither the four- nor three-factor model had strong fit in any of the settings. However, in comparison with other competing models, the four-factor model showed the best for the Australian sample, while the three-factor model was the most reasonable for both Chinese and Chilean samples. The reliability of the SPQ-B scores, estimated with Omega, ranged from 0.86 to 0.91. These findings suggest that the SPQ-B factors are not consistent across dif- ferent cultural groups. We suggest that these differences could be attributed to potential confounding cultural and translation issues. 1. Introduction Schizotypy is a heterogeneous construct that has been used by re- searchers and clinicians to describe schizotypal traits, psychosis-pro- neness, and psychotic-like experiences. Coined by Meehl (1962), it re- fers to a personality organisation that represents the vulnerability for developing psychotic-spectrum disorders. Expression of schizotypal traits (e.g. hallucinatory and delusional experiences), despite having a transient nature and possibly vanishing over time, can occur in the general population, without necessarily being associated with a mental health condition (Fonseca-Pedrero and Debbané, 2017; Linscott and Van Os, 2013; Van Os et al., 2009). For example, an international study conducted by McGrath et al. (2015) sampling 31261 adults in the community from 18 countries, found that the average life-time pre- valence of psychotic experience was 5.8%. Further, evidence from a meta-analysis showed that the risk of conversion to a clinical psychotic outcome among people who report subthreshold psychotic experiences (0.56%) is 3.5 times higher than those without exposure to such experiences (0.16%), particularly the experiences were severe or per- sistent (Kaymaz et al., 2012). Other longitudinal studies (e.g., Poulton et al., 2000; Zammit et al., 2013) also suggest that adolescents and young adults who report such schizotypal experiences are at greater risk of developing psychosis and related disorders than those who do not. These studies suggest that the presence of schizotypal features may represent a liability to developing symptoms of schizophrenia or tran- sitioning from subclinical impairments to a full-blown psychosis, and this is especially the case if genetic and environmental risk factors are present (e.g. degree of relatedness to family member with schizo- phrenia, cannabis use) (Linscott and Van Os, 2013; Debbané et al., 2015; Van Os et al., 2009). It is therefore important to identify and address schizotypal traits as early as possible as early detection and intervention may enable prevention of, or reduce the probability of progression in psychosis (Fonseca-Pedrero et al., 2016; Ortuno-Sierra et al., 2013). The Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire-Brief version (SPQ-B; Raine and Benishay, 1995) is one of the most popular scales used to http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2017.08.088 Received 4 November 2016; Received in revised form 6 July 2017; Accepted 25 August 2017 ⁎ Correspondence to: School of Psychology, Deakin University, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, 3125, Australia. E-mail address: linda.byrne@deakin.edu.au (L.K. Byrne). Psychiatry Research xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 0165-1781/ © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Liu, S., Psychiatry Research (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2017.08.088