The validity of the Whitaker Index of Schizophrenic Thinking

The Whitaker Index of Schizophrenic Thinking was designed to address an important clinical and research problem--the objective assessment of thought disorder. The present study assessed this test's convergent and discriminant validity and its diagnostic discriminating power (N = 56). We found that the WIST has limited clinical utility as a specific measure of disordered thought and as a diagnostic tool, but that it might still have certain important research applications.