Sensory perception quotient

The short version of the Sensory Perception Quotient (SPQ-short) [22] contains 35 items and assesses hypo- and hyper-sensory sensitivity across all five senses. Items are scored on a four-point scale from 0 ‘strongly agree’ to 3 ‘strongly disagree’. Items are summed to create a total score. Higher scores indicate less sensory sensitivity. To ease interpretation of the data, the SPQ-short was reversed scored in the current study so that higher scores indicated more sensory sensitivity. The factor structure of the Dutch SPQ-short has previously been evaluated in the NAR data, outlining a hierarchical model containing a general sensory sensitivity factor, with five subfactors across the five modalities of vision, taste, hearing, smell and touch [26]. The fit of this hierarchical model of the SPQ-short was evaluated in the current sample (which overlapped 55% with the previous publication), providing an adequate fit to the data (RMSEA = 0.06, CFI = 0.91, TLI = 0.90). The SPQ-short had good internal consistency within the current sample (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.89).