Theoretical Background and Rationale: The Persisting Effects Questionnaire (PEQ) has been used to measure long term changes in attitudes, emotions, and spiritual experiences after a psychedelic experience in a number of psychedelic trials.1 Research using the PEQ has demonstrated that for many, the psychedelic experience is among the most meaningful of their lives, while providing other benefits to mood and attitudes.1 While the PEQ has been widely used in psychedelic research since 2006, it yet has not been formally validated.2 

Research Question and Hypothesis: The goal of this analysis is to conduct a validation assessment of the PEQ and its subscales (consisting of either a positive or negative change in: attitudes about life, attitudes about self, mood changes, social effects, behavioral changes, and spirituality). 

Methods and Analysis:  Prolific will be used to obtain a roughly representative sample of 500 PEQ responses from the United States adult population. Exploratory factor analysis will be performed to identify the maximum number of stable and reliable factors. Convergent and divergent validity using the NIH Toolbox Emotion Battery questionnaires will be investigated. The revised version of the PEQ based on the exploratory factor analysis will undergo confirmatory factor analysis to evaluate how interpretable each item is and to generate fit indices. 

Main Findings: Data are being collected and analyses will be ongoing; final results will be available for presentation at ICPR. 

Conclusion: This analysis will result in a revised, validated, and shorter version of the PEQ.