PANAS — Right Now (State Affect)

This is the 20-item Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988) under its state instruction: the respondent rates the extent to which they feel each of twenty mood adjectives right now, at the present moment. Ten adjectives form the Positive Affect scale and ten the Negative Affect scale, scored separately because the two dimensions are largely independent rather than opposites.

The reference values shown in the norms section are the original 'Moment' instruction figures from Watson, Clark, and Tellegen's (1988) Table 1, so a state administration is compared against state norms rather than trait norms.

The notes below are reproduced from the platform's psychometrics register for this instrument — the same source-cited reliability, validity, and norms text that accompanies its downloadable report.

The PANAS subscales show excellent internal consistency: Positive Affect alpha typically 0.86-0.90, Negative Affect alpha typically 0.84-0.87 across time frames and populations (Watson et al., 1988; Crawford & Henry, 2004).

The two-factor structure is robust across instruction sets (state, trait, general, today, past year) and is replicated across diverse adult populations. The subscales show high discriminant validity from each other (r typically near zero) and convergent validity with theoretically related constructs (Watson et al., 1988).

Watson et al. (1988) report general adult norms for the state ('right now') instruction: Positive Affect M = 26.5, SD = 8.4; Negative Affect M = 12.0, SD = 3.4. Crawford & Henry (2004) provide UK community norms (N = 1,003). Bands shown on the result page span ±1 SD from the published mean.

“Interested”

Illustrative only. During administration items are presented one screen-set at a time; response-key direction is never shown to respondents.

Item responses are summed within each scale (reverse-keyed items recoded first) and expressed as a population percentile against the cited reference sample, with a reliability-based confidence range where α is published.

Watson, Clark & Tellegen (1988), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(6), 1063–1070, Table 1 — ‘Moment’ (‘right now’) instruction, undergraduate reference sample. Positive Affect: M = 29.7, SD = 7.9 (N = 660); Negative Affect: M = 14.8, SD = 5.4 (N = 660). Confidence range uses the standard error of measurement from the published Cronbach’s α lower bounds (PA ≥ .86, NA ≥ .84).

Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Tellegen, A. (1988). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(6), 1063–1070.

Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) by Watson, Clark & Tellegen (1988). Free for research and clinical use with attribution; a commercial-use grey area applies — do not imply commercial clearance.