Psychometric evaluation of a hindi version of positive-negative affect schedule

Abstract

Background - The present paper reports the development and psychometric evaluation of a Hindi version of the Positive-Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) originally developed in English by Watson, Clark, and Tellegen (1988). The PANAS is widely used tool for assessment of positive and negative affect in clinical as well as non-clinical setting and has also been used as a differential diagnostic tool for distinguishing the clinical depression from anxiety. Material & Method - A Hindi version of the PANAS (PANAS-H) was developed using the contemporary psychometric standards for developing transliteral equivalents and cross-cultural adaptation of psychological tests/scales. In order to evaluate the psychometric properties, the PANAS-H was administered on a relatively heterogeneous sample of 179 participants. The obtained data was subjected to an exploratory factor analysis (principal component analysis) which identified two theoretically significant orthogonal factors. The mood adjectives reflecting the positive affect loaded significantly on factor-1 whereas the affective lexicons representing the negative emotional engagement loaded significantly on factor-2. On the basis of this pattern of factor loading the first factor was labeled as ′Positive Affect′ (PA) and the second factor as ′Negative Affect′ (NA). Results : A significant but low negative correlation was observed between PA and NA which suggests that PA and NA are not independent of each other. Item analysis done for each subscales revealed that the Hindi affective lexicon used for tapping the dimensions of PA and NA are reliable and valid and form a homogeneous item-pool. Conclusion : The reliability of the PA and NA subscales as well as that of the whole scale was found to be highly satisfactory (0.804 for PA, 0.776 for NA, and 0.658 for full scale). Overall, the findings suggest that 1) the PANAS-H can reliably and validly measure the PA and NA of Hindi speaking individuals, and 2) the PANAS-H measures two distinct (PA and NA) but negatively related dimensions of affect.