Positive Affect Negative Affect Schedule
The Positive Affect Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) is a psychometric scale developed to measure the largely independent constructs of positive and negative affect, both as states and traits . Positive and negative affect have been shown to relate to other personality states and traits, such as anxiety.
The PANAS Developmental History
Numerous PA (Positive Affect) and NA (Negative Affect) scales have been developed and studied in a variety of research areas. The findings from these studies indicate that the two mood factors relate to different classes of and inconsistent findings have also been reported. For example: some mood scales have been developed through factor analysis (e.g., Stone, 1981) , but others have been constructed on a purely ad hoc basis with no supporting reliability or validity data (e.g., McAdams & Constantian, 1983)1. Therefore, raised the need for reliable and valid PA and NA scales that are also brief and easy to administer.
The development of the new scale by Watson, Clark & Tellegen (1988)5 was based on previous measures existed in the area. The starting point was 60 terms included in the factor analyses reported by Zevon and Tellegen (1982)6. Through a factor analysis the authors reduced the terms pool and yielded a final list of 10 descriptors for PA scale (attentive, interested, alert, excited, enthusiastic, inspired, proud, determined, strong and ACTIVE); and 10 descriptors for NA scale (distressed, upset-distressed; hostile, irritable-angry; scared, afraid-fearful; ashamed, guilty; nervous, and jittery).
The basic data was gathered primarily from undergraduates enrolled in various psychology courses (at Southern Methodist University - SMU SMU University). Likewise, groups of SMU employees completed questionnaires asking how they felt during the past few weeks and past few days. A sample of adults not affiliated with SMU also filled out a mood form with "today" time instructions. Preliminary analyses revealed no systematic differences between student and non-student responses, and they have been combined in all analyses. The PANAS scales also work reasonably well in adult and clinical samples.
Subjects were asked to rate how they felt in7 different time periods: (a) present moment; (b) today; (c) past few days; (d) past week; (e) past few weeks; (f) past year; (g) on the average (general).
The PANAS scales exhibit a significant level of stability in every time frame. No consistent [...] differences were found, so the data was collapsed across [...].
The PANAS scale intercorrelations and internal consistency reliabilities are all acceptably high (ranging from 0.86 to 0.90 for PA and 0.84 - 0.87 for NA). The reliability of the scales is unaffected by the time instructions used. The PANAS has high scale validity and high item validity.
Some research suggests that the PANAS scales provide reliable, precise, and largely independent measures of Positive Affect and Negative Affect, regardless of the subject or the time frame and response format used.
However, some criticisms of the PANAS measure have appeared in peer-reviewed publications. For instance, PANAS PA is increased by anger-inducing manipulations, not because anger is experienced positively. Instead, the increase is due to many of the PA items not reflecting positivity but reflecting approach motivation, which can be negative in valence
Further development of non-redundant short forms
Validation studies of the PANAS using structural equation modeling have found some items to be largely redundant, indicating that certain items of the PANAS can be eliminated without undermining its psychometric integrity . Kercher (1992) developed a PANAS short-form, but subsequent confirmatory factor analyses on this 10-item version revealed excessive covariance between some items indicating that redundancy remained while content domain coverage became suboptimized.
To address redundancy problems and derive a cross-culturally valid measure,Thompson (2007) developed the International Positive and Negative Affect Schedule Short-Form (I-PANAS-SF). The I-PANAS-SF was developed with a diverse international sample of English speakers and has removed items such as jittery that are colloquial to North America and Britain, and removed items such as excited that have ambiguous or vague meanings in some samples. The 10-item I-PANAS-SF comprises two independent 5-item scales with strong internal reliability, cross-sample and cross-cultural factorial invariance, temporal stability, convergent and criterion-related validities.
References:
1. McAdams, D. P., & Constantian, C. A. (1983). Intimacy and affiliation motives in daily living: An experience sampling analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psycholog3A 45, 851-861.
2. Stone, A. A. ( 1981). The association between perceptions of daily experiences and self- and spouse-rated mood. Journal of Research in Personality, 15, 510-522.
3. Tellegen, A. (1985). Structures of mood and personality and their relevance to assessing anxiety, with an emphasis on self-report. In A. H. Tuma & J. D. Maser (Eds.), Anxiety and the Anxiety disorders, (pp. 681-706), Hilssdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
4. Watson, D., & Clark, L. A. (1984). Negative affectivity: The disposition to experience negative aversive emotional states. Psychological Bulletin, 96, 465–490.
5. Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Tellegen, A. 1988. Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scale. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54: 1063-1070:
6. Zevon, M. A., & Tellegen, A. (1982). The structure of mood change: An idiographic/nomothetic analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 43, 111-122.
References
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