The Internal Structure of Positive and Negative Affect: A Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the PANAS

Abstract

This study tested five confirmatory factor analytic (CFA) models of the Positive Affect Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) to provide validity evidence based on its internal structure. A sample of 223 club sport athletes indicated their emotions during the past week. Results revealed that an orthogonal two-factor CFA model, specifying error correlations according to Zevon and Tellegen’s mood content categories, provided the best fit to our data. In addition, parameter estimates for this model suggest that PANAS scores are reliable and explain large proportions of item variance. Taken together with previous research, the findings further suggest that the PANAS may be a higher-order measure of affect and includes several consistently problematic items. The authors recommend that affect researchers attempt to improve the PANAS by (a) revising consistently problematic items, (b) adding new items to better capture mood content categories, and (c) providing additional internal structure validity evidence through a diagonally weighted least squares estimation of a second-order PANAS CFA model.

Confirmatory factor analysis and temporal invariance of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS)

“…Table 1 shows the goodness--of-fi t indices of the models tested. Zevon and Tellegens's (1982) content categories (Crawford & Henry, 2004;Tuccitto et al, 2010) and the cross-loading of excited between PA and NA (Mackinnon et al, 1999) We started our analysis by testing the two-factor independent model originally proposed by Watson et al (1988). We specifi ed a measurement model predicting that the 20 items of the full version loaded on two uncorrelated latent variables PA and NA.…”

“…The two-factor model was also the best fi tting model in the study of Terracciano et al (2003), where PA and NA scales remained substantially independent after accounting for measurement error. In the studies of Crawford and Henry (2004) and Tuccitto, Giacobbi and Leite (2010), the best fi tting model was also a two-factor model, specifying correlations according to the mood content categories of Zevon and Tellegen (1982). However, while the relationship between PA and NA was independent in the study of Tuccitto et al (2010) it was not completely independent in the study of Crawford and Henry (2004).…”

“…Both two-factor (Crawford & Henry, 2004;Crocker, 1997;Terracciano et al, 2003;Tuccitto et al, 2010;Watson & Clark, 1997) and three-factor models (Gaudreau et al, 2006;Killgore, 2000;Mehrabian, 1997) yield good fi t indices. In this paper, we intent to contribute to the literature by testing both two--factor and three-factor models of the PANAS and report which one best fi ts our data.…”

Dimensions of Subjective Well-Being

“…We make use of both techniques here. strongly negatively correlated-so that individuals can be experiencing both positive and negative affect simultaneously (Watson et al 1988;Tuccitto et al 2010). ONS-happy (''Overall, how happy did you feel yesterday?'')…”

Self-efficacy in the context of psychological abuse: a model of efficacy erosion.

“…Factor analyses have confirmed that the scale measures two primarily independent constructs (Tuccitto, Giacobbi, & Leite, 2009). For state affect ratings, the positive affect scale possesses a test-retest reliability of r = .54, while the negative affect scale possesses a test-retest reliability of r = .45 (Watson et aI., 1988).…”