The Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale (TEPS): Exploration and Confirmation of Factor Structure in a Healthy Chinese Sample

Raymond C K Chan,Yan-Fang Shi,Ya Wang,Man-Kin Lai,Ann M Kring,Yu-Na Wang,Robert K Heaton

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0035352

Abstract

BackgroundThe Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale (TEPS) is a measure specifically designed to capture the anticipatory and consummatory facets of pleasure. However, few studies have examined the structure of the measure in non-Western samples. The current study aimed to evaluate the factor structure and psychometric properties of the TEPS in a Chinese sample.MethodsWe administered the Chinese version of the TEPS to 2275 healthy Chinese college students. They were randomly split into two sub-samples. The first sub-sample was used for exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to examine the structure of the TEPS in a Chinese sample. The second sub-sample was used as a validation sample for the identified structure from the EFA and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was adopted.ResultsResults of the EFA suggested a four-factor model (consummatory contextual, consummatory abstract, anticipatory contextual, and anticipatory abstract factors) instead of the original two-factor model (consummatory and anticipatory factors) ascertained from Western samples in the United States. The CFA results confirmed these results in the second sub-sample. Internal consistency and test-retest stability of the TEPS factors were good.ConclusionsThe TEPS has four factors among Chinese participants. Possible reasons for cultural difference and potential applications of the TEPS for cross-cultural comparison are discussed.

Highlights

Anhedonia is one of the negative symptoms of schizophrenia and is a key feature of depression associated with social functioning in these patients [1,2]
EPA and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) Item-total correlation analyses were performed on the 20 items of the Chinese version of Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale (TEPS) in sample A of 1156 participants
Consistent with the two-factor model proposed by Gard et al [16], two of the four factors belonged to the Consummatory factor and the other two belonged to the Anticipatory factor

Summary

Introduction

Anhedonia is one of the negative symptoms of schizophrenia and is a key feature of depression associated with social functioning in these patients [1,2]. Most of the measures of anhedonia are limited to clinical rating scales and self-report trait questionnaires that adopt a unitary concept, the in-the-moment experience of pleasure or consummatory pleasure Despite the fact that many studies employ questionnaire based methods to assess trait positive emotion (e.g., [13,14,15]) and in-the-moment experience, very few scales or questionnaires have been designed to capture both anticipatory and consummatory constructs of pleasure. The Temporal Experience of Pleasure Scale (TEPS) is a measure designed to capture the anticipatory and consummatory facets of pleasure. The current study aimed to evaluate the factor structure and psychometric properties of the TEPS in a Chinese sample

Methods

Results

Conclusion