Momentary Affect (adapted from OECD)

OECD-AFFECT-NOWv2025Mood & AffectAdapted wording

8 items · Time frame: Right now

Eight feelings rated for the present moment on a 0–10 scale: happy, worried, calm, sad, angry, joyful, tired and stressed. The first four, one from each quadrant of the circumplex model of affect, are the short list for frequent prompts. Positive and negative feelings are asked separately, on unipolar scales, as the OECD recommends.

Adapted wording

Adapted from the OECD affect module (Box 2.5) for experience sampling: the recall period changed from "yesterday" to "right now", each feeling asked as a full question, and the frequency anchors ("not at all" to "all of the time") replaced by intensity anchors ("not at all" to "completely"). The feelings, their order and the unipolar 0–10 scale are the OECD's. Not comparable with the OECD's "yesterday" figures.

Source

Adapted from OECD (2025), Box 2.5 (affect extended module), pp. 37–39.

Scoring

Per prompt: affect balance from the short list = mean(happy, calm) − mean(worried, sad), range −10 to +10. With all eight items, positive affect = mean(happy, calm, joyful) and negative affect = mean(worried, sad, angry, tired, stressed). Analyse within and between persons (e.g. multilevel models); person means over many prompts estimate a person's typical affect.

Citation

OECD (2025). OECD Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-being (2025 Update). OECD Publishing, Paris.

doi:10.1787/9203632a-en

License: Item wording from OECD (2025), licensed under CC BY 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0). Attribution: OECD (2025), OECD Guidelines on Measuring Subjective Well-being (2025 Update), OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/9203632a-en. Do not use the OECD logo or suggest that the OECD endorses a study. This is an adaptation of an original work by the OECD. The opinions expressed and arguments employed in this adaptation should not be reported as representing the official views of the OECD or of its Member countries.