Development and validation of a new mood inventory

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate an instrument to measure the individual's mood state. After the selection of items which state the individual's temporary mood, and their factor analysis with 404 male and female subjects, scale development resulted in a 40-items Mood Inventory with five factors: tension and excitement, refreshing mood, fatigue, depressive mood, and anxious mood. Psychometric evaluation by test-retest method, odd-even method, and parallel test method suggested that the Mood Inventory is internally consistent and has well enough high reliability and validity. A comparative study among patients with psychosomatic diseases, patients with physical illness, and healthy subjects, revealed that patients with psychosomatic diseases showed significantly higher scores of tension and excitement, fatigue, depressive mood, and anxious mood than healthy subjects, and that the healthy subjects showed significantly higher refreshing mood score than other clinical subjects. It was suggested that the Mood Inventory has considerably high discriminant validity and enough potential for the clinical and research application.