A measure of positive and negative affect for children: Scale development and preliminary validation.

Abstract

A child version of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS: D. Watson, L. A. Clark, & A. Tellegen, 1988), the PANAS-C, was developed using students in Grades 4-8 (N = 707). Item selection was based on psychometric and theoretical grounds. The resulting Negative Affect (NA) and Positive Affect (PA) scales demonstrated good convergent and discriminant validity with existing self-report measures of childhood anxiety and depression; the PANAS-C performed much like its adult namesake. Overall, the PANAS-C, like the adult PANAS, is a brief, useful measure that can be used to differentiate anxiety from depression in youngsters. As such, this instrument addresses the shortcomings of existing measures of childhood anxiety and depression.