Abstract

An attempt was made to identify the main mood factors using items from widely used questionnaires. A hierarchical factor analysis of 170 mood items was performed. The items formed five primary mood factors (Depression, Hostility, Fatigue, Anxiety and Extraversion) with one general factor (hedonic tone). All the primaries correlated with this general factor. However, the adequacy of this structure was questioned on the grounds that some psychometric assumptions have been broken by most mood scale constructors. A post hoc analysis of a subset of items showed two factors may better map the higher mood sphere.