Adaptating the Need for Affect Scale to Turkish Culture and its Psychometric Qualities

Abstract

The affect is an indispensable part of our lives. The need for affect includes people’s desire to understand one’s own and others’ feelings. Affects are effective on shaping judgments and behaviors of people. When people perceive affects as disturbing, they won’t want to experience them and try to understand others’ feelings. Moreover when people don’t perceive affects as generative, they could refrain from approaching them. So, people demonstrate different reactions towards participating in or refraining from activities with intense affects. This is a case directly related to people’s need for affect. The need for affect is defined as the general motivation level of people for participating in or refraining from situations and activities containing various affects. There is a need to evaluate people’s need for affect by means of valid and reliable measurement tools. Hence, this study was conducted to meet this need the main purpose of which was to determine the validity and reliability of The Need for Affect Scale in Turkish society. The reliability of this scale that was used by 645 undergraduate students revealed that it has an internal consistency of .82 for approach subscale and 0.81 for avoidance subscale, and 0.84 for Need for Affect Scale totally. According to the principal component analysis, it was determined that the inventory has two dimensions; total variability of the first dimension is 23%, and the second dimension’ is 14%, and 37% in total. As a result of this study, it is determined that the Need for Affect Scale is a valid and reliable tool that can be used in the Turkish society.