Bradburn Affect Balance Scale Research Articles

Children With Chronic Illness: Family and Parent Demographic Characteristics and Psychosocial Adjustment

This paper presents the results of an epidemiologic study that compares and contrasts psychosocial characteristics of parents and family units of children with chronic illness or physical disability (chronic health problems) with those of healthy children. Data were derived from the Ontario Child Health Study of 1869 randomly selected families, with 3294 children aged 4 to 16 years. In the absence of significant differences between parents and families of children with chronic illness alone and those with physical disability, these groups were combined for analysis, for which odds ratios (OR) or t tests were used. Significant positive findings included increased rates of parental treatment for "nerves" (mothers' OR = 2.1, fathers' OR = 1.9) and increased maternal negative affect scores (Bradburn Affect Balance Scale) (P less than .001) among parents of children with chronic health problems. Important negative findings (95% confidence interval of the OR included 1) included no increase in single-parent families (OR = 1.2), social isolation (OR = 1.0), or alcohol problems (OR = 1.2) among parents of children with chronic health problems. Categorically defined family dysfunction did not differ between the two groups (OR = 1.1). These data contrast with several clinic-based studies and suggest that, in a widely generalizable population survey, families of children with chronic health problems including physical disability do not suffer a marked excess of dysfunction, although some indicators of individual parent psychosocial problems were modestly elevated.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Cross-sectional Age Differences and Longitudinal Change on the Bradburn Affect Balance Scale

Cross-sectional age differences and longitudinal change were examined on psychological well-being, positive affect, and negative affect, as measured by the Bradburn Affect Balance Scale. Data were collected from 1,159 participants in 1971 and 1985. Cross-sectional analyses showed age differences: older cohorts reported greater overall well-being but lower levels of both positive and negative affect when compared to younger respondents. Longitudinal analyses indicated small but significant changes toward decreased positive and negative affect but increased overall well-being. Negative affect had the strongest effect size. Positive and negative affect showed different patterns of change for different age groups. Taken together, cross-sectional and longitudinal findings suggest that change in affect variables is age-related, although these changes are relatively small. More evident was a pattern of correlational stability with age. Finally, the pattern of the results supports a two-factor theory of psychological well-being.

Subjective well-being as a function of age and gender: A multivariate look for differentiated trends

Studies on subjective well-being (SWB) suggest that its cognitive aspect, or life satisfaction, is positively correlated with age, whereas its affective aspect, often separated into positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA), is negatively correlated with age. Gender differences in SWB are usually small. The present study attempted to explore these trends in an Israeli sample of 447 community-dwelling people aged 21 to 87, with special reference to relatively unattended issues as the effect of control variables on the affective aspect and the feasible age by gender interaction in SWB. The results showed that Cantril's Self-Anchoring Scale (SAS), Bradburn's Affect Balance Scale (ABS), and Neugarten et al.'s Life Satisfaction Index A (LSIA) were all significantly and negatively correlated with age. No significant gender differences emerged, but a significant age by gender interaction was found in SAS and LSIA. Controlling for personal variables (education, health, place of birth, and marital status) could wipe out the age effects on SAS and LSIA, but not on ABS. By the same procedure, the age by gender interaction could be wiped out in SAS, and substantially reduced in LSIA. The age effect on ABS was mainly due to PA, rather than NA. The results indicate the differential impact of personal variables on the aspects of SWB. Refering to the Israeli context, it seems that both cohort- and aging-related variables account for the decline of life satisfaction in the older subjects. Age-associated decline of affect is apparently connected to some other adaptive mechanisms, which regulate both positive and negative affect in old age.

Physical and psychological well-being in working nulliparous women during pregnancy

The aim of this prospective study on 170 nulliparous women was to evaluate physical and psychological well-being during pregnancy as reported on the Hopkins Symptom Checklist (HSCL) and the Bradburn Affect Balance Scale, administered at 18 and 34 weeks' gestation. Moreover, for the 133 women in paid employment, variables related to various aspects of well-being were assessed.The HSCL and the Bradburn Scale were evaluated with regard to their factor-structure to measure physical and psychological well-being during pregnancy. Principal component analysis of the HSCL showed three independent factors: a depression, a somatic symptom and an anxiety dimension. The Bradburn Scale was used as a measure of overall psychological well-being; its two independent positive and negative affect sub-scales could not be replicated. Psychological and physical changes accompanying normal pregnancy influenced the response to these scales; the need for cartful evaluation of the use of well-being scales during pregnancy is stre...

Measurement of spiritual well-being: a hospice caregiver sample.

This is a methodological study designed to assess the reliability and validity of Paloutzian and Ellison's (1982) Spiritual Well-being Scale. The scale was administered to 70 family members caring for a terminally ill relative. The 20 item measure yields three scores: spiritual well-being (overall score), existential well-being and religious well-being (overall score), existential well-being and religious well-being. The Cronbach's alpha coefficients were .95, .94, and .84 respectively. Construct validity of the measure is discussed in relation to Bradburn's Affect Balance Scale, qualitative data obtained during the interviews and a review of relevant literature related to spiritual well-being. Evidence in support of construct validity of the Spiritual Well-being Scale is lacking.

Older People's Performance on the Profile of Mood States (POMS)

This paper reports on the psychometric properties and feasibility of using the Profile of Mood State (POMS) with older adults to establish its cross-age usefulness in assessing emotional states. The POMS Scale, along with measures of functional status and Bradburn's Affect Balance Scale, was administered to 505 older adults 65 and over recruited from 4 different locations. Exploratory factor analysis indicated a similar factor structure for both the older adult and the original standardized samples for five of the six original factors (Tension, Depression, Anger, Fatigue and Vigor). There were enough differences between the sixth original factor (Confusion) and older-persons confusion factor to warrant a different scoring for older samples. Tests of validity demonstrated concurrent relationships of the POMS scores with indicators of competence and psychological well-being. Cross-sectional age comparisons on the POMS factors inidcated that older subjects appeared relatively healthier than the original samp...

Which Comes First: Poor Psychological Well-Being or Decreased Friendship Activity?

Research has shown there is a positive relationship between friendship activity and psychological well-being. The common interpretation of this correlation is that an increase in friendship activity improves psychological well-being. This article shows any of the following three interpretations are more plausible: (1) good psychological well-being causes an increase in friendship activity, (2) the relationship is spurious, or (3) the system is nonrecursive. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed. This article is based on a 1981-1984 longitudinal study of white, nonmarried, elderly women who lived in a middle-class suburb of Chicago. Cross-lagged panel analysis is used to interpret the relationships between aggregate measures of friendship activity and Bradburn's affect balance scale.

Involvement in Activities and the Psychological Well-Being of Retired Men

This research represents a partial test of the activity theory of aging. The data used are from the National Longitudinal Surveys of older men and the Bradburn Affect Balance Scale and its subscales of Positive and Negative Affect were employed as dependent variables while participation in 10 types of activities were used as the primary independent variables. The central hypothesis that more involvement in activities results in higher levels of psychological well-being was supported in the cases of Positive Affect and Affect Balance. However, involvement in activities exerted trivial effects on Negative Affect and other hypotheses based on activity theory were not supported.

Subjective health, intimacy, and perceived self-efficacy after heart attack: Predicting life quality five years afterwards

In a national sample of some 400 cardiac patients and their wives, changes in quality of life were investigated during an extended period of physical and psychosocial recovery. Scores on the Bradburn Affect Balance Scale were found to be strongly correlated with Pearson coefficients in the vicinity of 0.7 over a five-year period, indicating a certain stability of subjective perceptions of well-being and ill-being. just as neuroticism and extraversion have been found to discriminate between ‘happy’ and ‘unhappy’ people in several studies, the stability of well-being in our study appeared to be influenced by subjective health perceptions, a sense of self-efficacy, and relatively stable socio-environmental conditions associated with the level of spouse intimacy and marital stress. Substantial health-related and interpersonal problems appeared to be the cause of an erosion of feelings of personal competence and, therefore, to be predictive of high negative affect and ill-being. In contrast, positive health perceptions and marital intimacy were directly related to a sense of well-being. Stable socio-environmental conditions and perceived self-efficacy are suggested as salient factors in causal models of the effect of life events on well-being.

A longitudinal study on environmental and dispositional determinants of life quality: Social support and coping with physical illness

As part of a longitudinal study on adaptation with a national sample of cardiac patients, socio-environmental and psychological variables were investigated regarding their influence on life quality. Reports by both spouses on positive and negative aspects of their marital relationship were found to have mainly a same-domain impact on positive and negative affect. Experienced social support appeared to have a weak buffering effect in the negative affect domain. Stable characteristics of the marital bond, along with dispositional factors, were suggested as an explanation for the relative stability and statistical association of scores on the Bradburn Affect Balance Scale. A two-factor model of well-being that treats positive and negative affect as independent processes appeared to be supported by a multivariate analysis of longitudinal data.

Marital context and post-infarction quality of life: Is it social support or something more?

The development of a theory of quality of life following serious illness is currently an important field of endeavour in rehabilitation research. The interpersonal relationships of people and elements of the self-concept appear to be salient factors in causal models of subjective well-being. One such model developed to explain characteristic levels of well-being was used in a longitudinal study of adaptation to a first myocardial infarction. Data were collected from a national sample of male cardiac patients and their spouses on the illness and marital situation as predictors of long-term well-being or ill-being. Analyses of data from the first three waves of the study, which is to extend over 5 years after the onset of illness, are to be discussed in the paper. Marital status, the emotional quality of the spouse relationship and long-standing marital stressors were found to have direct and indirect effects on the two dimensions of the Bradburn Affect Balance Scale. The same is true of continuing problems associated with the heart attack relative to perceptions of having coped effectively with the after effects of illness. Differences in self-esteem and personal competence were suggested as mediators of socio-environmental and illness-related influences. The two-factor conception of well-being developed was found to be a useful framework for investigating positive and negative aspects of psychosocial rehabilitation. The same factors that explain differences between happy and unhappy people in social indicators research also appeared to be determinants of different trajectories of adaptation in the wake of a life-threatening illness. Previous research using theoretical models from stress research has overemphasized psychosocial morbidity and stress management and neglected positive processes of adaptation. The identification of love resources related to positive feeling states and life satisfaction has, therefore, not received the attention it deserves. This is especially the case regarding an overemphasis of the concept of social support as a buffer of stress. Instruments were developed to measure high and low marital intimacy, as well as chronic marital role strains, and these measures appeared to explain different trajectories of adjustment to cardiac disease. The two-factor model appears to be useful for future work on quality of life with chronic illness. The same is true of four marital contexts of rehabilitation that were identified in the study.

Psychological maturity and subjective well-being: Toward a new synthesis.

Alker and Gawin (1978) proposed that happiness or well-being is higher among more psychologically mature individuals, and that happiness is qualitatively different for individuals of different levels of maturity. Using the Loevinger Washington University Sentence Completion Test (WUSCT; Loevinger & Wessler, 1970) as a measure of developmental maturity, together with the Bradburn Affect Balance Scale (Bradburn, 1969) and two additional measures of subjective wellbeing in a sample of 240 adult males, the present study failed to replicate the association of maturity with well-being. Further, the personality dispositions of neuroticism and extraversion were found to show significant relations to happiness regardless of maturity level of subjects. It was proposed that developmental level may determine the occasions or interpretations of happiness or unhappiness but that the quality and quantity of the experience of subjective well-being itself is independent of maturity. Theory and research on the nature of happiness (or the closely related constructs of life satisfaction, morale, and subjective wellbeing) have resulted in a growing understanding of its determinants. Survey research (Andrews & Withey, 1976) has shown the modest contributions of sociodemographic variables to well-being. Adaptation-level theory has been used to explain the unexpectedly small differences in happiness between groups sharply contrasted in objective quality of life (Brickman, Coates, & Janoff-Bulman, 1978). The role of the enduring personality dispositions of neuroticism and extraversion in predicting characteristic levels of well-being has been demonstrated using a variety of measures of both personality and well-being, with predictive intervals of over 10 years (Costa & McCrae, 1980a; Costa, McCrae,

Neuroticism and well-being inventories: measuring traits or states?

Inventories designed to measure neuroticism are similar in form and content to inventories used to measure symptoms or subjective well-being. In addition, it is not clear to what extent traits as well as a person's present state explain the variance of such measures. Three inventories--the Neuroticism Scale from Wilde's Amsterdamse Biografische Vragenlijst, Bradburn's Affect Balance Scale and a Symptom Measure--were administered three times in order to study their reliability, stability and relation with psychosocial stress and life events. Major differences between inventories were not found. The results favoured the trait position.

Psychological well-being in great Britain: An evaluation of the Bradburn Affect Balance Scale

Analysis of the Affect Balance Scale using a representative national British sample ( N = 932) confirms Bradburn's (1969) two-dimensional model of psychological well-being. Comparisons between the British results and data from the United States are found to yield largely similar results between socio-demographic variables and the two postulated dimensions of well-being: positive and negative affect. In addition, support is found for Bradburn's claim that the balance derived from summing scores on the positive and negative affect scales is a more powerful predictor of psychological well-being than either of the independent affect scales taken separately. Finally, the lack of account made of predisposing personality variables as potential predictors of well-being is discussed.

The quality of life in Australia

This paper outlines a long term project on the quality of life in Australia and presents some initial survey data. The long term project is intended (1) to find which domains of life most affect the perceived well-being of Australians and the values/satisfactions people wish to achieve in these domains (2) to propose policy programs designed to enhance satisfaction with particular domains and (3) to assess the political feasibility of proposed programs. Policy programs intended to enhance satisfaction are termed positive welfare programs to distinguish them from conventional compensatory welfare programs. The survey data analysed here (national sample, N=679) deal with the satisfactions and dissatisfactions of Australians, the correlates of perceived well-being and the links between domains and values. Perceived well-being is measured by Andrews and Withey's Life-as-a-whole index and Bradburn's Affect Balance scale. Satisfactions are measured on a 9 point modified version of Andrews and Withey's delighted-terrible scale. Readers familiar with American, British and Canadian findings will find the results reported here broadly similar. However, the linkage between people's sociological characteristics and their satisfaction levels appears to be exceptionally weak in Australia, which tends to confirm the view that Australia is a comparatively unstratified society.

Factors Associated with Adjustment to Marital Separation

Abstract The dramatic increase in divorce in the United States over the past two decades has resulted in a need for closer examination of the factors associated with the adjustment to marital separation. This article reports a multivariate examination of health and social factors associated with post-separation adjustment In depth interviews were completed with 205 individuals, separated no longer than 26 months, about their marriage, its failure, and its aftermath. The study examines the role of social contact, health, economic stability, and dating behavior in the adjustment to marital separation. Multiple regression analysis is used to examine the independent and collective influences on adjustment, measured both by the Bradburn Affect Balance Scale and the Cantril Ladder technique. The analysis consistently demonstrated that economic stability, health status, and frequency of dating are significant predictors of post-separation adjustment. The implications of these findings are considered with special...

Happiness: Time Trends, Seasonal Variations, Intersurvey Differences, and Other Mysteries

This paper examines trends in psychological well-being in the United States since the Second World War. To measure these trends, a long series of surveys with questions on subjective, personal happiness are analyzed. To test the adequacy of this measure, its association with more complex measures of well-being (e.g., the Bradburn Affect Balance scale and the Andrews and Withey life-feeling scale) was examined, and its testlretest stability determined. Both indicated that happiness might serve as a suitable indicator. Variations in question wording were examined in the happiness series. Differences were found that prevented all wordings being used in a uniform, single series, but the general trends were detectable by using the two main variations as parallel series. Possible seasonal and context effects were also found that further complicated the analysis of happiness. With the effects of variant wordings, seasons, and contexts taken into consideration, it appears that happiness rose from the late forties to the late fifties, then fell until the early seventies, and then, possibly after some rebound, remained stable from the early seventies to the present.

The Philadelphia Geriatric Center Morale Scale: a revision.

The 22-item Philadelphia Geriatric Center (PGC) Morale Scale was subjected to a series of principal component analyses utilizing different item pools and rotating differing numbers of factors. Subjects were 1086 tenants of federally-assisted housing for the elderly and older people living in the community. Results were compared with analyses of the PGC Scale done by Morris and Sherwood. Consideration of factors defined by the analyses suggested three consistently reproduced factors: Agitation, Attitude Toward Own Aging, and Lonely Dissatisfaction, utilizing 17 of the original items. These results were compared with other multi-dimensional measures of morale: the Bradburn Affect Balance Scale, and morale scales reported by Pierce and Clark, and Schooler. In addition to the dimensions derived from the current study related domains of self-rated health, social accessibility, generalized attitude toward aging, and positive affect were suggested as worthy of further exploration as dimensions of morale.