Assessing affect in adolescents with e-diaries: multilevel confirmatory factor analyses of different factor models

Matthias F Limberger; Florian Schmiedek; Philip S Santangelo; Markus Reichert; Lena M Wieland; Oksana Berhe; Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg; Heike Tost; Ulrich W Ebner-Priemer

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1061229

Assessing affect in adolescents with e-diaries: multilevel confirmatory factor analyses of different factor models

Front Psychol. 2023 Jun 23:14:1061229. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1061229. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Matthias F Limberger¹, Florian Schmiedek^{2

3

4}, Philip S Santangelo^{1

5}, Markus Reichert^{1

6

7}, Lena M Wieland^{1

2

3}, Oksana Berhe⁸, Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg⁸, Heike Tost⁸, Ulrich W Ebner-Priemer^{1

8}

Affiliations

¹ Mental mHealth Lab, Institute for Sport and Sport Science, Faculty for Humanities and Social Sciences, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany.
² Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education (DIPF), Frankfurt, Germany.
³ IDeA Research Center for Individual Development and Adaptive Education of Children at Risk, Frankfurt, Germany.
⁴ Department of Educational Psychology, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany.
⁵ Behavioural Health Technology Interventions, Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences, Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, Université du Luxembourg, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg.
⁶ Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim, Heidelberg University, Mannheim, Germany.
⁷ Department of eHealth and Sports Analytics, Faculty of Sports Science, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany.
⁸ Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany.

Abstract

In the last two decades, e-diary studies have gained increasing interest, with a dominant focus on mood and affect. Although requested in current guidelines, psychometric properties are rarely reported, and methodological investigations of factor structure, model fit, and the reliability of mood and affect assessment are limited. We used a seven-day e-diary dataset of 189 adolescent participants (12-17 years). The e-diary affect assessments revealed a considerable portion of within-person variance. The six-factor model showed the best model fit compared to the less complex models. Factor loadings also improved with the complexity of the models. Accordingly, we recommend that future e-diary studies of adolescents use the six-factor model of affect as well as reporting psychometric properties and model fit. For future e-diary scale development, we recommend using a minimum of three items per scale to enable the use of confirmatory multilevel factor analyses.

Keywords: adolescents; affect; ambulatory assessment; psychometric properties; reliability.