Optimism, pessimism and "fighting spirit": a new approach to assessing expectancy and adaptation

The present study describes the construction and validation of a new scale for measuring optimism, pessimism and "fighting spirit", entitled the Posit ive And Negative Expectancy Questionnaire (PANEQ). Principal axis factor an alysis of an initial pool of items generated by a scenario study yielded th ree factors, labelled negative affect/pessimism, fighting spirit and positi ve affect/optimism, all of which showed high internal (coefficient alpha) a nd re-test reliability. The original factor analysis was subsequently repli cated in a separate sample using confirmatory factor analysis, and a struct ural equation model for the relationship between PANEQ and three measures o f health and well-being provided evidence for discriminate validity of the three scales. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.