Affect (Mood States), Assessment of

In psychology, the term mood refers to a person's emotional state. Mood is central to psychological health, and disturbances in mood are related to subsequent psychological maladjustment. Moods such as elation, joyfulness, and excitement, when experienced within normal ranges, enhance a person's life and are associated with well-being. Moods such as anger, hostility, depression, and mania are negative emotions. When these moods are experienced outside of the normal range or when a person no longer has control over these moods, psychological disturbances appear in behavior. While it is normal for persons to experience anger, irritation, or sadness based on external events, these emotions can become extreme, leading to the need for psychological intervention.

A client's mood permeates almost any aspect of psychological intervention, and hence a reliable assessment of mood is part of the psychologist's armamentarium. The most common methods of assessing mood are the clinical interview and the use of a self-report inventory, but some psychologists use projective tests to assess mood. Although there are psychologists who tend to rely on their own clinical judgments and avoid more formal assessments, a [Page 460]formal and organized assessment typically provides more accurate information than interviewing a patient in an unstructured manner. A systematic assessment evaluates all aspects of mood, whereas an unstructured assessment guided by clinical judgment can become sidetracked on a particular line of inquiry and fail to assess all aspects of the problem.

This entry reviews the instruments and scales most commonly used by psychologists to assess disturbances in mood. Some of these use a true/false format, others have a checklist format, and still others have a multiple-choice format, but the format is less important than the range of content included in the instrument. Some of these instruments are referred to as broad-band instruments because they assess a variety of emotions. Others are referred to as narrow-band tests, signifying that they assess only a single specific mood.

When assessing moods, psychologists consider whether the respondent is reporting honestly or is faking a response (i.e., exaggerating or underreporting his or her problems and emotional state). Inaccurate or “faked” responses are more likely when an evaluation is conducted to decide about employment, child custody, or prison release, or to obviate or attenuate a court verdict.

Some tests and scales include items that are both obvious and subtle to control for faking. An obvious item is one where the content of the item is logically related to the mood being assessed. For example, “I feel blue most of the time” is an obvious item when assessing depression. A respondent motivated to fake a response could do so easily on such an item. However, if research has found that depressed respondents often answer, “False” to the item “I like to eat candy,” the item is not obviously related to depression (i.e., provides a subtle assessment of depression). In general, tests and scales that have ways to detect tendencies toward inaccurate or inconsistent responding are more valid than those without such means.

Finally, psychologists evaluate the psychometric properties of tests and scales prior to using an instrument. Psychometric properties refer to the reliability, validity, internal structure, and correlations with external behavior of scores on the scale. All of the measures reviewed in this entry have acceptable reliability and validity.

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