I would definitely add a measure of peak and low emotional moments. Their presence - especially that of low moments - helps predict evaluation of daily well-being. Also, the content of these moments is incredibly rich and provides insight into how people experience their days. See attached my related paper, where I included peak-low measured in the DRM (Day Reconstruction Method) study.

And here is the related paper.

Thanks miron-shatz, this is great. I now have to work out how to fit the items in and keep my questionnaire concise. Do you think it would still add value when I am asking people's retrospective accounts from the last hour, four times a day?

You might look at the experience sampling literature. One place to start:

Differentiating Emotions Across Contexts: Comparing Adults With and Without Social Anxiety Disorder Using Random, Social Interaction, and Daily Experience Sampling.

Kashdan, Todd B.; Farmer, Antonina S.

Emotion, Feb 10 , 2014

Thanks Linda, the momentary emotion ratings are just what I was looking for, I also found a couple of other relevant papers in the same journal!

We used PANAS, in experience sampling study (7 days, 5 signals a day), as well as satisfaction measure.

You can also consider to research not only valence, but also the activation aspect of mood.

Hi Tom,

I think it depends what you are interested in and what other constructs you have in your study. I suppose you mean "affective well-being" and its differentiation from "mood". Some time ago I have reviewed literature on affective well-being because I needed a good defintion for a paper. I found that affective well-being is measured rather inconsistently with instruments such as the PANAS but also the General Health Questionnaire - which in my opinion would be more a measure of mental health.

Regarding the diary design: how often do you want to measure? In diary studies with only one assessment per day you can include items on momentary mood and some specific emotions that occurred during the day. In an experience sampling study you might be limited to very few items and thus have to ask for only those specific moods or emotions you have a hypothesis for. When investigating emotions in the work context you can use items from the the JAWS instead of PANAS. For the assessment of mood you can take as well the MMQ (Multidimensional Mood Questionnaire) which has very good reliabilities and can be used with bipolar items.

Best, Dorota

Hi Petra

Thanks, is it possible to have a look at the paper? I have sent you a 'request' assuming I have chosen the correct article on your homepage?

Regards

Tom

Hi Dorota

Thanks for your input, I will be measuring over 10 days, with 3 'beeps' a day, so it's important my measures are concise. I Have seen that some articles have used abbreviated variants of the MMQ (perhaps looking at 'happiness' and 'satisfaction') and that seems to fit the bill for me so thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

Regards

Tom

Hi Tom.

we used the pleasant mood dimension of the MMQ in an experience sampling study (10 working days, 3 "beeps" a day). We had four 4-point bipolar intensity items (happy– unhappy, contented– discontented, good– bad, well– unwell) and the median of the reliabilities (Cronbach alpha) for all assessments was .92. So this subscale is not only concise but very reliable as well. I can really recommend it.

Best, Dorota

You might also want to have a look at the Pleasure, Arousal & Dominance scale (PAD) short version. The Office for National Statisitcs UK have also looked at measuring well-being countrywide, so may also be worth a look as they focused on just a few questions. Main thing is to keep what they have to fill out at a reasonable length, otherwise you will start to get poor data.

Thanks Robert, the aim is to measure my variables within 15/16 items at a time, and rotate some items to represent a slightly larger pool of items (20/21). Then I plan to use multiple imputation to address the missing data, like the approach discussed in the attached paper.

Hi Tom

If you're not looking for specific affect, here's a brief mood measure that was developed for the use in ambulatory assessment. Maybe it helps.

Article Assessing Mood in Daily Life Structural Validity, Sensitivit...

Thanks Dominik (and sorry for the late reply)

I have had a brief look and these are also really good, I just need to ensure they don't overlap with my personality 'states' (activated variants of traits) though.

Cheers

Tom

Tom, did you get my paper?

Yes, thank you, sorry I kept clicking on the abstract link!

Tom