A Study on Verification of the Profile of Mood States(POMS) for Korean Elders

Shin, Yun Hee

Abstract

This paper was done to verify the use of the Profile of Mood States (POMS) which was developed by McNair, Lorr, and Droppleman(1992) with modifi cations so that it is appropriate for Korean elders. Through the modified tool, it is possible to examine the mood of Korean elders and to contribute to the welfare of elders. The subjects were 370 elderly persons over 60 years old and the data for 319 persons(86%) were analyzed. The research tool was the POMS translated by Yun(1993) and corrected by the researcher. Data were collected between February 12 and April 9 in 1996 and analyzed using the SAS package. The result are as follows: 1. Items with low Cronbach coefficient alpha which means low correlation with total items were removed. The items were removed; friendly, tense, considerate, relaxed, sympathetic, resentful, good-natured, rebellious, trusting, carefree. 2. Overlapped or ambiguous items were discussed by colleagues and elders through verification of content-validity and were removed. Five items were removed in tense-anxiety, seven, in depression -dejection, three, in vigor-activity, three, in fatigue-inertia, two, in confusion-bewilderment, five, in friendliness, and six, in anger? hostility. Thirty four items remainined; angry, clear-headed, lively, confused, sorry, shaky, listless, peeved, sad, active, blue, hopeless, spiteful, uneasy, unable to concentrate, fatigued, helpful, nervous, lonely, cheerful, bitter, exhausted, anxious, ready to fight, sluggish, helpless, alert, deceived, efficient, worthless, forgetful, terrified, vigorous, and uncertain about things. 3. Factor analysis was done in order to confirm con struct validity and three factors were obtained from the result. The first factor, 'anxiety-depression' included 21 items, the second factor, 'vigor' included eight items, and the third factor, 'anger' included five items. Cronbach coefficient alpha for the 34 items was .95. Based on the result, the following is suggested: 1. a contribute to elder's welfare can be made by examining Korean elder's mood in life. 2. there is a need to develop tools appropriate to Korean culture which can be used to examine elders' mood. 3. The modified POMS tool needs to be reverified with appropriate age groups and settings.