How to Assess Joy in Childhood. Utility and Functioning of a Picture Scale

OROS, L.B; RICHAUD DE MINZI M. C.

Florida

Congreso; 4° World Congress on Positive Psychology; 2015

The early emergence of emotional understanding by means of facial expressions allows the assessment of basic emotions from young ages through pictures or photographs of human faces. This evaluation strategy allows children, with limited language to reveal feelings that neither investigators nor clinicians would be able to obtain verbally. The present work presents a non-verbal activity aimed at testing children?s joy. It is based on a visual analogue scale integrated by seven pictures of infant facial expressions. This scale has the advantage of presenting an animated design, more friendly and appealing than simplified face scales. Facial expressions are horizontally arranged from the most joyful to the saddest one, including a neutral expression. Children are requested to point to the expression that best reflects their mood state in terms of joy-sadness, on a regular basis or at the time of doing the task, depending on the intention to evaluate joy as a feature or as a state. There is a version for girls and one for boys. This scale was used with distinct purposes in different scientific studies. Statistical procedures performed with different samples of Argentine children show the psychometric goodness of the scale.