Intentional and non-intentional assessments of emotion experiences: Comparisons of old and new measures

Abstract

In two studies, we compared intentional and non-intentional measures of emotional well-being in terms of reliability and validity. In the first study, we expanded on the findings of ¸Sim¸sek (2011) by showing that an intentional measure of emotional well-being, namely the Emotional Well-Being Scale, accounted for unique variance in both negative and positive mental health indicators above and beyond the variance accounted for by Larsen and Diener’s Scales (1992), which measures all dimensions of affect circumplex. The correlated traits-correlated uniqueness model results showed that the original-intentional version of the Emotional Well-Being Scale explained more variance in the measurement model than the non-intentional version. The second study showed that the results were similar for the intentional vs. nonintentional versions of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedules (Watson, Clark & Tellegen, 1988). The intentional version of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedules accounted for more variance in the criteria than the non-intentional version.