OECD Affect Yesterday

OECD-AFFECT-Yv2025Mood & AffectOriginal wording

9 items · Time frame: Yesterday

How much of yesterday a person felt happy, worried, calm, sad, angry, joyful, tired and stressed, each on a 0–10 scale. Suited to a morning diary. The first four items are the OECD short list, one feeling from each quadrant of the circumplex model of affect. The OECD module has a ninth item (smiling or laughing) that is not included in this entry. For population estimates the OECD recommends at least 2,000 respondents; in a diary study each participant answers on many days.

Source

OECD (2025), Box 2.5 (affect extended module), pp. 37–39, items 1–8.

Scoring

Report each feeling separately: the mean and the share with low positive affect (4 or less) or high negative affect (6 or more). Affect balance from the short list = mean(happy, calm) − mean(worried, sad), range −10 to +10; report the share below 0. With all eight items, positive affect = mean(happy, calm, joyful) and negative affect = mean(worried, sad, angry, tired, stressed); the OECD's long-list positive score also includes the smiling item, which is not part of this entry. Screen for response sets (the same answer to every item).

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.