Positive emotion is often neglected in the depressed patients due to the lack of assessment tool. Positive Emotion Rating Scale (PERS) is a newly invented self-report questionnaire, nevertheless has an impressive psychometric properties.
Objective: The aim of this study was to study the psychometric properties of the Malay version PERS (PERS-M), in order to facilitate its use in the local setting.
Method: In this cross-sectional study convenient sampling, total of 43 depressed subjects and 85 non-depressed subjects who were presented to the outpatient clinic of HBUK were recruited. Both groups were assessed with PERS-M, original PERS, Dispositional Positive Emotion Scale (DPES), Malay version of Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale (SHAPS-M) and Malay version of Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression CESDM).
Results: PERS-M displayed good internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.89), parallel reliability (intraclasss coefficient = 0.95, p<0.001) and concurrent validity with the DPES (r=0.32, p<0.05) and SHAPS-M (r=0.77, p<0.01). The PERS-M was negatively correlated with CESD-M (r= -0.61, p<0.01). The optimal cut-off value was 32, with sensitivity = 0.68 and specificity = 0.63, positive predictive value of 0.49 and negative predictive value of 0.79. The area under the curve (AUC) for receiver operating characteristic (ROC) was 0.71 (95% CI = 0.604 - 0.813).
Conclusion: the PERS-M is a brief and easy to administer tool to measure positive emotion in depressed subjects, with demonstrable satisfactory psychometric properties.
Keywords: Positive Emotion, Depression, Psychometric Properties, Instrument
Study site: Psychiatric clinic, Hospital Bahagia Ulu Kinta, Perak, Malaysia