Positive Affect Items Research Articles

Age differences among Japanese on the center for epidemiologic studies depression scale: An ethnocultural perspective on somatization

The Japanese version of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) was subjected to principal component (PC) analysis with oblique rotation, as well as an examination of internal consistency, using data obtained from 2,016 adult employees aged 19–63 years. Analyses focused on age differences in these psychometric properties of the CES-D. Coefficient-α was sufficiently high for all age groups but was lower than reported in U.S. studies. Positive affect items lowered internal consistency. The PC analyses extracted four factors for each age group. Depressive affect items did not group into one factor; some were combined with somatic or interpersonal items, and the remainder constituted the smallest factor. These three main factors, ‘somatic + depressed’, ‘interpersonal + negative’ and ‘positive affect’ were comparable across age groups except for those aged 50–63 years. For those aged 50–63 years, the first two factors were combined into a large ‘general dysphoria’ factor, suggesting a more unified conceptualization of depressive mood. Although ‘positive affect’ was stable cross-culturally, it was not related to depressive symptomatology as measured by the other items, for Japanese. The ‘interpersonal + negative’ appears unique for Japanese, indicating the association of interpersonal relations with depressive mood in Japanese. The effects of age-specific ethnocultural factors in Japan on depressive symptomatology are discussed.

Measuring subjective well-being: Unfolding the Bradburn Affect Balance Scale

Factor analysis of the items in the Bradburn Affect Balance Scale has repeatedly shown that the positive and negative affect items are unrelated. Despite this, negative affect scores are routinely subtracted from positive affect scores to derive Affect Balance Scale Scores that apparently provide a valid measure of a sense of well-being. In this paper we offer a resolution to this paradox — and so justify the use of Affect Balance Scale Scores — by showing that the positive and negative affect items each form a single cumulative scale, and that the two cumulative scales taken together form one unidimensional unfolding scale. This explanation is based on a hypothesis by Coombs and Kao (1960) — later proved mathematically by Ross and Cliff (1964) — that when data that are unfoldable in r dimensions are factor-analyzed, r+1 significant factors will be found. In an empirical test, Bradburn Affect Balance Scale data collected from ten countries in the 1981 and 1990 European Values Study surveys were analyzed. The results clearly support the hypothesis that the data form a single unidimensional unfolding scale, although two of the ten Affect Balance Scale items are not homogenous with the rest.

Perceptions of Self-Affect: Now and in the Future

Subjects were asked to provide self-applicability ratings for positive and negative affect items from the PANAS (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) in either a present time frame (“How do you feel now?”) or a future time frame (“How will you feel five years from now?”). Both response times to the items and the applicability ratings were analyzed. Subjects' response times yielded the usual prototypicality curves for both positive and negative emotion terms in the present context, but only for positive emotion terms in the future context. Subjects' applicability ratings indicated that positive emotion terms were generally perceived as more applicable to the self than negative emotion terms, but that the positive emotion terms were thought to be even more applicable in the future than they are now. Finally, the results indicated that the responses to positive and negative items were not always independent, particularly in the future context. The implications of these data for Markus' (1990) ideas about possibl...

The factorial equivalence of state anxiety—negative affect and state extraversion—positive affect

This study sought to determine whether measures of positive and negative affect were essentially identical to state Extraversion and state Anxiety. A chain- P factor analysis of mood items revealed three clear factors. One was loaded by negative affect and state Anxiety items, another by positive affect and state Extraversion items, and a third by those negative affect and state Anxiety items that bore on ill temper or aggression. It was concluded that the constructs of positive and negative affect were structurally equivalent to state Extraversion and state Anxiety.