Development and validation of the emotion and mood components of Anxiety Questionnaire

Abstract

Mood and emotion research in sport psychology is typically conducted using single adjective checklists such as the Profile of Mood States. A limitation of single adjective checklists is that they assess the intensity of the affective response but not the context, and thus cannot reliably distinguish mood from emotion. Recent research has emphasized the importance of distinguishing mood from emotion both theoretically (Lane & Terry, 2000) and practically (Jones, 2003).The purpose of the present research was to develop a self-report measure that distinguishes mood from emotion. No such method currently exists, despite an extensive literature attesting to theoretical distinctions between the two (see Ekman & Davidson, 1994). Beedie, Lane and Terry (2001) proposed that mood and emotion can be distinguished empirically. Their proposal was made on the basis of content analyses of 65 published papers addressing distinctions between emotion and mood, and of interview data from 106 participants relating to the same question (Beedie, Terry, & Lane, in press). The present study reports the development and validation of the measure: The Emotion and Mood Components of Anxiety Questionnaire (EMCA-Q).