[2] Clinical and non-clinical studies have found the PANAS to be a reliable and valid instrument in the assessment of positive and negative affect.
The researchers extracted 60 terms from the factor analyses of Michael Zevon and Tellegen[4] shown to be relatively accurate markers of either positive or negative affect, but not both.
Previous mood scales for children have been shown to reliably capture the former relationship but not the latter; the PANAS-C was created as a tool with better discriminant validity for child assessment.
The purpose of the PANAS-SF was not only to provide a shorter and more concise form of the PANAS, but to be able to apply the schedules to older clinical populations.
[2] Separate from the PANAS-SF, Edmund Thompson created the international PANAS short form (I-PANAS-SF) in order to make a 10 item mood scale that can be implemented effectively on an international level, provide more clarity on the content of the items, reduce ambiguities, address the limitations of the original and the previous short form of the PANAS, and also to provide a shorter, yet dependable and valid scale.
[6] In 1994, Watson and Clark developed an expanded form of the PANAS, called the PANAS-X, that consists of 60 items that can be completed in 10 minutes or less.
[1] However, to date, the PANAS is mostly used as a research tool in group studies, but it has the potential to be utilized in clinical work with individuals.
[1] Furthermore, the PANAS has the potential to be used to evaluate mental illnesses, as shown in an experiment conducted by Dyck, Jolly, and Kramer, which demonstrated its effectiveness in distinguishing between depression and anxiety in clinical samples.