Introduction
Affect refers to whether you feel emotionally in a positive or negative mood. An often used measure of both positive and negative affect is the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule PANAS (Watson, Clark, and Tellegen, 1988).
The PANAS scale gives a score for positive and negative affect between 10 and 50 points. In the original study with American undergraduates, the average positive affect (for the moment) was 29.7, and the average negative affect was 14.8 points (n=660). You can run the demo to see how you compare (you get feedback).
| In the implementation below, the question is how people feel in the present moment. You can also ask about today, the past few days, the past few weeks, the year, or in general (see Watson et al., 1988). |
In this implementation, the order of the positive and negative adjectives is randomized for each participant.
Run the demo
Legal stuff
It seems that PANAS can be used for research, but you need to acknowledge the authors and their research paper when writing about it (Watson et al., 1988).
Technically
One of the features used in this PsyToolkit implementation is that question items are presented in random order. (o: random). The questions are shown one after another.
Note that in the scale, we use the HTML linebreak code: <br>
The survey code for PsyToolkit
scale: howmuch
- Very slightly<br>or not at all
- A little
- Moderately
- Quite a bit
- Extremely
l: panas1
t: scale howmuch
q: This scale consists of a number of words that describe different feelings and emotions.
Read each item and then select how much you feel like this from the scale.
Indicate to what extent you feel this way right now, that is, at the *present moment*.
o: random
o: buildup
- {1} Interested
- {2} Distressed
- {3} Excited
- {4} Upset
- {5} Strong
- {6} Guilty
- {7} Scared
- {8} Hostile
- {9} Ethusiastic
- {10} Proud
- {11} Irritable
- {12} Alert
- {13} Ashamed
- {14} Inspired
- {15} Nervous
- {16} Determined
- {17} Attentive
- {18} Jittery
- {19} Active
- {20} Afraid
random: end
l: positive
t: set
- sum $panas1.1 $panas1.3 $panas1.5 $panas1.9 $panas1.10 $panas1.12 $panas1.14 $panas1.16 $panas1.17 $panas1.19
l: negative
t: set
- sum $panas1.2 $panas1.4 $panas1.6 $panas1.7 $panas1.8 $panas1.11 $panas1.13 $panas1.15 $panas1.18 $panas1.20
l: feedback
t: info
q: <b>Your current positive affect score is {$positive}<br>
Your negative affect score is {$negative}</b><br>
Note: Scores can range from 10 to 50.<br>
In the 1988 positive affect mean among 660 American undergraduate students was 29.7 (Table 1, Watson et al., 1988).
<br>For negative affect it was 14.8.<br>
References
-
D. Watson, L.A. Clark, & A. Tellegen (1988). Development and Validation of Brief Measures of Positive and Negative Affect: The PANAS Scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 1063-1070. link to PDF here