Measurement of responses to suggestions for relaxation by means of indirect and direct tests

First, some analytic characterizations of suggestibility as well as a brief summary of recent developments of tests and scales for suggestibility without hypnosis are provided. Following that summary, an empirical study on the development of a relaxation tool both for induction and measurement is described that does not make use of the terms ‘suggestion’ and ‘hypnosis’. The objective was to measure suggestibility and relaxation that may correlate to these two approaches. This instrument consists of indirect motor items which are supposed to induce relaxation in an implicit manner and mental items inducing relaxation in an explicit way. In order to assess its psychometric quality this scale was administered to 177 school children (aged between 10 and 21 years). Item difficulties, item-total-correlations and reliability had satisfactory psychometric qualities. The correlation between these scales was moderate (r = 0.37). Finally, the strategy for further development of the scales is outlined. Copyright © 2008 British Society of Experimental & Clinical Hypnosis. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.