Abstract
The present study was conducted with the aim of constructing and validating a short form of the Profile of Mood States (POMS). The POMS is a widely-applied measure for the assessment of an individual's mood. Thus, it is of great relevance for many research questions in clinical and social psychology. To develop the short scale, we first examined psychometric properties and found the optimal 16-item solution among all valid combinations of the full POMS in an exploratory subsample (n = 1,029) of our complete representative sample of the German general population. We then validated this model in a confirmatory subsample (n = 977). Additionally, we examined its invariance across age groups and sex, as well as its reliability. Our results indicate that the POMS-16 is a valid and reliable measure of mood states with minimal losses compared to the 35-item version. Particularly where brevity and an economical assessment is desired, the POMS-16 should be considered.
Highlights
The questionnaire “Profile of Mood States” (POMS; McNair et al, 1992) is a widely used questionnaire in the clinical field when examining psychotherapeutic, psychological and somatic questions, and in pharmacological, occupational, and sports medicine studies to record the state of mind
In the oncological area, it is used to measure the general stress on patients (Dilorenzo et al, 1999), and the quality of life (e.g., Baker et al, 2002) and to evaluate the effects of interventions (e.g., Classen et al, 2001; Hosaka et al, 2001; Grulke et al, 2004). These application areas are consistent with the seven areas of application of the POMS described in the manual by the authors McNair et al (1992): psychotherapeutic and pharmacological studies, cancer and addiction research, research on emotions as well as in sports psychology
Since the factorial structure was only limited satisfactory in a representative large sample, an item selection for a good factorial structure has to be implemented in order to improve the factorial structure
Summary
The questionnaire “Profile of Mood States” (POMS; McNair et al, 1992) is a widely used questionnaire in the clinical field when examining psychotherapeutic, psychological and somatic questions, and in pharmacological, occupational, and sports medicine studies to record the state of mind. In the (psycho) oncological area, it is used to measure the general stress on patients (Dilorenzo et al, 1999), and the quality of life (e.g., Baker et al, 2002) and to evaluate the effects of interventions (e.g., Classen et al, 2001; Hosaka et al, 2001; Grulke et al, 2004) These application areas are consistent with the seven areas of application of the POMS described in the manual by the authors McNair et al (1992): psychotherapeutic and pharmacological studies, cancer and addiction research, research on emotions as well as in sports psychology. The POMS is used in variants with a 7-step answer scale for each item and an alternative recording period such as “How did you feel today?” (vs. last week including today) e.g., by Gibson (1997)
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