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Article Excerpt
Since the end of the 20th century, clients' moods have gained considerable attention from helping professionals (Watson & Tellegen, 1985). Because mood is assumed to have a major role in psychological processes (Bower, 1981; Forgas, 2001), accurate assessment of individuals' moods must reflect the structure of their emotional experience. There are universal and culture-specific aspects of emotional experience and its categorization (Elfenbein & Ambady, 2002; Griffiths, 1997; Scherer & Wallbott, 1994). People from diverse cultures and speakers of various languages recognize multiple emotions and divide them into different categories (Hartel & Hartel, 2005; Russell, 1991). Russell (1978, 1983) addressed the issue of two facets of emotion. He pointed out that positive-negative emotions and degree of arousal of activation have consistently emerged as the two major dimensions of mood. However, dimensions of aggression and dominance demonstrated in some cultures were not salient and could not be applied across studies and cultures. The varying categories and structures of moods across different cultures--that is, the cross-cultural study of human affect--has been an important area of interest among researchers (Yeun & Shin-Park, 2006). Accordingly, the accurate measurement of mood states that are relevant to certain cultures has become a valuable research endeavor. The advantages of using the same measure across cultures include gaining insights into universal aspects of mood (H. O. Lee, Lee, & Kohlman, 1999) as well as facilitating international comparisons (Yeun & Shin-Park, 2006).
The Profile of Mood States (POMS; McNair, Lorr, & Droppelman, 1981) is one of the measures designed to measure overall mood states, allowing for an assessment of psychological well-being. The POMS is one of the most widely used instruments for assessing individual mood states and has been used to examine the effects of particular psychological interventions on mood (McNair et al., 1981). The POMS is known as the most suitable mood scale for both research and therapy and has a wide range of applications (Mellalieu, 2003). The POMS has been translated, therefore, into many languages, including Australian (Moore, Stanley, & Burrows, 1990), Hebrew (Netz, Zeav, Arnon, & Daniel, 2005), Japanese (Yokoyama, Araki, Kawakami, & Tkakeshita, 1990), Chinese (Chen, Snyder, & Krichbaum, 2002), and Korean (H. O. Lee et al., 1999), among others. These research studies have been conducted to validate its translation and to examine the reliability of the POMS subscales. By comparing outcomes of assessment between North Americans and Koreans using the POMS-Brief, Yeun and Shin-Park (2006) found that the POMS subscales of Tension-Anxiety, Depression-Dejection, and Fatigue-Inertia differ by gender in Korean samples. They found that Korean women are suppressed in a male-oriented society and that candid expressions of mood have negative connotations in Korean culture. Another study conducted by Kim, Lee, Jeong, Shin, and Yoon (2003) using the Korean version of the Profile of Mood States (K-POMS; H. O. Lee et al., 1999) found a sixth factor indicating a unique characteristic of Korean samples. This new sixth factor represents "uncertainty and helplessness," which may be qualified as somewhat different from depression. All of these are important findings; nonetheless, problems of translation were not considered.
Research suggests that there are problems inherent in translating an instrument into another language (Chen et al., 2002; Van de Vijver & Hambleton, 1996; Van Kuyk-Minis & Liu, 1998). Language is culturally anchored (Russell, 1991). Consequently, a particular word may not exist in another language, or the meaning of a construct that the instrument is designed to measure may vary across different cultures. For example, the Korean word Han refers to complex feelings of bitterness, grudge, and resentment experienced by a person that result in loneliness and helplessness (Choi, 1991). To our knowledge, there is no such equivalent in English. As Kitayama, Markus, and Kurokawa (2000) discussed, the same positive feeling may be represented by different constructs across various cultures. In their study, a collectivistic culture (e.g., Japanese) reported more engaged, positive emotions such as respect and friendly feelings, whereas North Americans, considered an individualistic culture, tended to respond with disengaged, positive feelings such as superiority and pride.
For these reasons, simply translating the POMS into another language may not produce an accurate representation of the construct and its subscales when applied across cultures. Greenfield (1997) has pointed out that personality tests developed in one culture and translated for other cultures are inclined to be insensitive to cultural differences and can lead to distorted...
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