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Abstract
The factor structure of psychotic symptoms as assessed by means of the Scales for
the Assessment of Positive and Negative Symptoms (SAPS and SANS) was examined in a
sample of 660 psychotic inpatients. Analyses were conducted at item-level. Principal-component
analysis (PCA) was used to extract factors, the OBLIMIN procedure to rotate factors,
and the eigen value greater-than-one criterion to determine the number of factors.
PCA resulted in 11 interpretable factors explaining 64% of the total variance: poverty
of affect/speech, thought disorder/inappropriate affect, bizarre delusions, social
dysfunction, other delusions, paranoid delusions, bizarre behavior, nonauditory hallucinations,
auditory hallucinations, manic thought disorder, and attention. Many of the factors
were significantly intercorrelated. A second-order PCA resulted in four second-order
factors, the first three roughly corresponding to the well-known psychosis, disorganization
and negative dimensions. It is concluded that the factor structure of psychotic symptoms
is more complex than is generally acknowledged, and that the dimensions of psychosis,
disorganization and negative represent second-order dimensions. The subscale composition
of the SAPS and SANS was not supported.