Observing the Emotional State of Healthy Children

Abstract

The aim of the study was to develop a structured observational technique to assess the emotional state of children between three and seven years of age in different environmental situations. The instrument that was developed relates to a theoretical model of emotion with four basic components, namely; activation, orientation, evaluation, and emotional control. The development of the observational technique proceeded by defining and weighting a large number of explicit behaviors, where after real-life observations of children were carried out in order to determine the reliability, internal consistency and construct validity of the instrument. As concerns validity, hypotheses based on earlier findings were tested. On the whole the results were satisfactory. The instrument fulfilled the requirements of internal consistency and interobserver reliability. Results from a forthcoming study also show convergence between the activation scale and personality as measured by Pitkänen's personality test. The results suggest that the instrument may be useful when evaluating improvements in children's environments.