Measuring the negative mood component of stress experiences: Description and psychometric properties of a short adjective check-list of stress responses

Negative Mood (NIM) is a 19-items adjective check-list developed to assess negative mood and stress responses. The items of the scale reflect dimensio ns such as depressed mood, anxiety, anger and time urgency. The data were c ollected from four different samples, two random population samples and two smaller selective samples. The psychometric properties of the NM showed high internal consistency (Cro nbach's Alpha). When analysed with principal components analysis, three fac tors emerged, anxiety/depression, lime pressure, and anger. The factors eme rged in all four samples, within samples and between gender. The NM factors were tested for convergent and discriminative validity by correlating them with other more established measures of different aspects of negative mood . The results showed high convergent and discriminative validity for two of the NM factors, i.e,, anxiety/depression, and anger, whereas the results f or the third factor, time pressure. were more ambiguous. This scale has pro ven to be useful in capturing some vital dimensions of negative affect acro ss different kinds of populations.