Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-cfpbc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T05:45:06.965Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Assessing mood in older adults: a conceptual review of methods and approaches

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2012

Laura J. E. Brown  and
Arlene J. Astell
Laura J. E. Brown
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK
Arlene J. Astell*
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK
*
Correspondence should be addressed to: Dr. Arlene J. Astell, School of Psychology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK. Phone: +44 1334 462056; Fax: +44 1334 463042. Email: aja3@st-and.ac.uk.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Background: Accurate measures of mood state are important for understanding and optimizing health and well-being in later life. A range of different mood assessment measures is available, reflecting the variety of ways in which mood has been conceptualized and the different purposes for which measures have been developed.

Methods: We undertook a conceptual review of the literature relating to mood and its assessment in older populations.

Results: Moods are subjective states of mind that are typically described and quantified using self-report measures. Moods can be conceptually differentiated from the related psychological concepts of emotion, well-being, quality of life, and depression. Quantitative tools for assessing mood state include single-item mood ratings, composite factor scales, and clinical depression assessments. Mood assessments may be administered retrospectively or contemporaneously to the mood state of interest. The method and temporal perspective used to assess mood state will impact on the nature and precision of the mood data that are collected, and the types of research questions that can be addressed.

Conclusions: No single mood assessment technique can be considered optimal for all situations. Rather, both the type of tool and the temporal perspective taken must be selected according to the nature of the study design and the research question being addressed. More thorough and frank reporting of the rationale for, and limitations of, mood assessment techniques are also essential for continued development of mood research with older adults.

Keywords

affecthappinessmental healthagingquality of lifedepression
Type
Review Article
Information
International Psychogeriatrics , Volume 24 , Special Issue 8: Focus on late life depression , August 2012 , pp. 1197 - 1206
Copyright
Copyright © International Psychogeriatric Association 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abdel-Khalek, A. M. (2006). Measuring happiness with a single-item scale. Social Behavior and Personality, 34, 139–150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Areni, C. S. and Burger, M. (2008). Memories of “bad” days are more biased than memories of “good” days: past Saturdays vary, but past Mondays are always blue. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 38, 1395–1415.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beedie, C., Terry, P. and Lane, A. (2005). Distinctions between emotion and mood. Cognition and Emotion, 19, 847–878. doi:10.1080/02699930541000057.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beedie, C., Terry, P. and Lane, A. (2011). Differential assessment of emotions and moods: development and validation of the emotion and mood components of anxiety questionnaire. Personality and Individual Differences, 50, 228–233. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2010.09.034.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Charles, S. T. and Almeida, D. M. (2006). Daily reports of symptoms and negative affect: not all symptoms are the same. Psychology and Health, 21, 1–17. doi:10.1080/14768320500129239.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Costa, P. T. Jr., McCrae, R. R. and Zonderman, A. B. (1987). Environmental and dispositional influences on well-being: longitudinal follow-up of an American national sample. British Journal of Psychology, 178, 299–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crawford, J. R. et al. (2009). A convenient method of obtaining percentile norms and accompanying interval estimates for self-report mood scales (DASS, DASS-21, HADS, PANAS, and sAD). British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 48, 163–180. doi:10.1348/014466508X377757.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Denollet, J. (1993). Emotional distress and fatigue in coronary heart disease: the Global Mood Scale (GMS). Psychological Medicine, 23, 111–121.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Denollet, J. and De Vries, J. (2006). Positive and negative affect within the realm of depression, stress and fatigue: the two-factor distress model of the Global Mood Scale (GMS). Journal of Affective Disorders, 91, 171–180. doi:10.1016/j.jad.2005.12.044.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Diener, E. (2000). Subjective well-being: the science of happiness and a proposal for a national index. American Psychologist, 55, 34–43. doi:10.1037//0003-066X.55.1.3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, J. A. (2009). Happiness and age cycles – return to start. . .? On the functional relationship between subjective well-being and age. OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers, No. 99, OECD Publishing. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/220573570724.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fliege, H., Becker, J., Walter, O. B., Bjorner, J. B., Klapp, B. F. and Rose, M. (2005). Development of a computer-adaptive test for depression (D-CAT). Quality of Life Research, 14, 2277–2291.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gardner, W. et al. (2004). Computerized adaptive measurement of depression: a simulation study. BMC Psychiatry, 4, 13.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gross, J. J. and Levenson, R. W. (1993). Emotional suppression: physiology, self-report, and expressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 970–986.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hill, R. D., van Boxtel, M. P. J., Ponds, R., Houx, P. J. and Jolles, J. (2005). Positive affect and its relationship to free recall memory performance in a sample of older Dutch adults from the Maastricht Aging Study. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 20, 429–435. doi:10.1002/gps.1300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahneman, D., Krueger, A. B., Schkade, D. A., Schwartz, N. and Stone, A. A. (2004). A survey method for characterizing daily life experience: the Day Reconstruction Method. Science, 306, 1776–1780. doi: 10.1126/science.1103572.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kelley-Gillespie, N. (2009). An integrated conceptual model of quality of life for older adults based on a synthesis of the literature. Applied Research in Quality of Life, 4, 259–282. doi: 10.1007/s11482-009-9075-9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Konttinen, H., Silventoinen, K., Sarlio-Lähteenkorva, S., Männistö, S. and Haukkala, A. (2010). Emotional eating and physical activity self-efficacy as pathways in the association between depressive symptoms and adiposity indicators. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 92, 1031–1039. doi:10.3945/ajcn.2010.29732.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Larsen, J. T., McGraw, A. P. and Cacioppo, . (2001). Can people feel happy and sad at the same time? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 684–696. doi:10.1037//0022-3514.81.4.684.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Linley, P. A., Maltby, J., Wood, A. M., Osborne, G. and Hurling, R. (2009). Measuring happiness: the higher order factor structure of subjective and psychological well-being measures. Personality and Individual Differences, 47, 878–884. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2009.07.010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lykken, D. and Tellegen, A. (1996). Happiness is a stochastic phenomenon. Psychological Science, 7, 186–189.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNair, D. M., Lorr, M. and Droppleman, L. F. (1971). Manual for the Profile of Mood States. San Diego, CA: Educational and Industrial Testing Services.Google Scholar
Mienaltowski, A. and Blanchard-Fields, F. (2005). Differential effects of mood on age differences in the correspondence bias. Psychology and Aging, 20, 589–600.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Miron-Shatz, T., Stone, A. and Kahneman, D. (2009). Memories of yesterday's emotions: does the valence of experience affect the memory-experience gap? Emotion, 9, 885–891. doi:10.1037/a0017823.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Parisi, J. M. (2010). Engagement in adulthood: perceptions and participation in daily activities. Activities, Adaptation, and Aging, 34, 1–16.Google ScholarPubMed
Petersen, C. (2006). A Primer in Positive Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Powell, R. et al. (2009). Activity and affect: repeated within-participant assessment in people after joint replacement surgery. Rehabilitation Psychology, 54, 83–90. doi:10.1037/a0014864.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Radloff, L. S. (1977). The CES-D scale: a self-report depression scale for research in the general population. Applied Psychological Measurement, 1, 385–401. doi:10.1177/014662167700100306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Redelmeier, D. A. and Kahneman, D. (1996). Patients’ memories of painful medical treatments: real-time and retrospective evaluations of two minimally invasive procedures. Pain, 66, 3–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Robertson, C. et al. (2009). Meaning behind measurement: self-comparisons affect responses to health-related quality of life questionnaires. Quality of Life Research, 18, 221–230. doi:10.1007/s11136-008-9435-1.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Röcke, C., Li, S.-C. and Smith, J. (2009). Intraindividual variability in positive and negative affect over 45 days: do older adults fluctuate less than young adults? Psychology and Aging, 24, 863–878.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ryan, M. R. and Deci, E. L. (2001). On happiness and human potentials: a review of research on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 141–166.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ryff, C. D. (1995). Psychological well-being in adult life. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 4, 99–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ryff, C. D. and Keyes, C. L. M. (1995). The structure of well-being revisited. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 719–727.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schwartz, N. and Clore, G. L. (1983). Mood, misattribution, and judgments of well-being: informative and directive functions of affective states. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, 513–523.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stawski, R. S., Sliwinski, M. J., Almeida, D. M. and Smyth, J. M. (2008). Reported exposure and emotional reactivity to daily stressors: the roles of adult-age and global perceived stress. Psychology and Aging, 23, 52–61.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Steptoe, A. and Wardle, J. (2005). Positive affect and biological function in everyday life. Neurobiology of Aging, 26, S108–S112. doi:10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2005.08.016.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stern, R. A., Arruda, J. E., Hooper, C. R., Wolfner, G. D. and Morey, C. E. (1997). Visual analogue mood scales to measure internal mood state in neurologically impaired patients: descrption and initial validity evidence. Aphasiology, 11, 59–70. doi:10.1080/02687039708248455.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stone, A. A. and Shiffman, S. (2002). Capturing momentary, self-report data: a proposal for reporting guidelines. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 24, 236–243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sunderland, T. et al. (1988). A new scale for the assessment of depressed mood in demented patients. American Journal of Psychiatry, 145, 955–959Google ScholarPubMed
Tennant, R. et al. (2007). The Warwick–Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS): development and UK validation. Health and Quality of Life Outcomes, 5, 63. doi:10.1186/1477-7525-5-63.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Urry, H. L. et al. (2004). Making a life worth living: neural correlates of well-being. Psychological Science, 15, 367–372.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Watson, D. and Clark, L. A. (1994). The PANAS-X: Manual for the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule – Expanded Form. Iowa City: University of Iowa.Google Scholar
Watson, D. and Clark, L. A. (1997). Measurement and mismeasurement of mood: recurrent and emergent issues. Journal of Personality Assessment, 68, 267–296.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Watson, D. and Tellegen, A. (1985). Toward a consensual structure of mood. Psychological Bulletin, 98, 219–235.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watson, D., Clark, L. A. and Tellegen, A. (1988). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: the PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 1063–1070.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
White, M. P. and Dolan, P. (2009). Accounting for the richness of daily activities. Psychological Science, 20, 1000–1008.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wirtz, D., Kruger, J., Napa Scollon, C. and Diener, E. (2003). What to do on spring break? The role of predicted, on-line, and remembered experience in future choice. Psychological Science, 14, 520–524. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.03455.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yesavage, A. et al. (1983). Development and validation of a geriatric depression screening scale: a preliminary report. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 17, 37–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zung, W. W. K. (1965). A self-rating depression scale. Archives of General Psychiatry, 12, 63–70.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed