COMPUTER ANXIETY AND MEASUREMENT OF MOOD CHANGE

Approximately 30% of the UK population have been characterised as suff ering, to some extent, from computer anxiety, showing either physiolog ical, cognitive, or negatively affective reactions when working with c omputers. In this study, the relationship between computer anxiety and self-ratings of mood change was investigated. Mood was measured eithe r by a computerized form of visual analog scales or by an identical te st administered by paper-and-pencil. Positive mood change was manipula ted by a modified Velten-type Mood Induction Procedure (VMIP, Velten, 1968) administered via a computer. Undergraduate student volunteers (4 0 males and 68 females) completed visual analog mood scales before and after the VMIP. The correlation between self-ratings of mood and the computer anxiety scores was significantly greater in the computer comp ared with the paper-and-pencil groups. Computer anxiety related to mea sured mood when the mood measurements were collected using the compute rized procedure but not the paper procedure. The implications of these findings for the clinical application of computerized mood assessment are discussed. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.