A paranormal phenomenon is an alleged event or perception that defies a normal scientific explanation. This is not to be confused with a supernatural event or perception, which would be deemed a miracle and therefore considered religiously inspired by some. Paranormal phenomena typically do not provide any acceptable physical evidence to verify their existence and, for this reason, they are not embraced by science.
As such, it is difficult to study the paranormal in a controlled laboratory setting. The field of parapsychology is often referred to as an ‘anecdotal discipline’ because the majority of studies rely on participant observation and personal experiences as a source of data. This approach is widely criticised as posing a risk to the researcher’s ability to objectively gather data and may be subject to observer bias.
Additionally, the type of data collected via this method is typically subjective and cannot be independently verified by other researchers. Consequently, paranormal research is often viewed with suspicion by those who are not part of the research community.
This paper aims to address these limitations by using an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to identify the latent constructs that underlie paranormal belief. An initial collection of 29 items has been derived from a combination of adapted items from the Revised Paranormal Belief Scale, Australian Sheep-Goat Scale and Survey of Scientifically Unacceptable Beliefs, alongside four novel items developed by the authors. The resulting factor structure was then tested for psychometric properties.