Measurement Scales for Researchers

Kindly please read: With the enormous growth of interest in the subject of Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS), it now can be found under the umbrella term of Environmental Sensitivity, Michael Pluess’s way of putting together my work, mostly on adults, and his work with Jay Belsky on Differential Susceptibility along with Tom Boyce’s Biological Sensitivity to Context, based mostly on work with children.

Obviously methods of measurement have increased too. There is a new self-test, found on this website and a printable version here). You can also find test on Michael Pluess’s website, designed especially for researchers at sensitivityresearch.com. There you will find a “measures” tab under research with on a number of measures for young people and parents and teachers, all based on the old HSP Scale. The correlation between the new and old self-tests is very good, so these should be still quite usable.

You will not see on the sensitivtyresearch.com two self-tests that are found here. One is the Highly Sensitive Child Test and the other is for High Sensation Seeking. The former was the product of interviews and validations that were not published at the time of its writing, but there has since then been a published validation: Boterberg, S., & Warreyn, P. (2016). Making sense of it all: The impact of sensory processing sensitivity on daily functioning of children. Personality and Individual Differences, 92, 80-86.

Information about the High Sensation Seeking measure is in Acevedo, B. P., Aron, E. N., Aron, A., Cooper, T., & Marhenke, R. (2023). Sensory processing sensitivity and its relation to sensation seeking. Current Research in Behavioral Sciences, 4, 100100.