A Growing Edge of Measurement of Feelings [ Abridged ]

Abstract

Feelings are states of the self, and incorporate moods and sensations. Although a person may appreciate precisely his state on a selected dimension, words may fail to describe the exactness of the subjective experience. The paucity of suitable quantitative terms in common speech limits the amount of information which can be transferred. Continuous phenomena have to be graded in artificial categories. A digital system is imposed on the observer, when the freedom of an analogue system would be welcome. An understanding of many problems in clinical research presupposes that it is possible to communicate the desired information from patient to clinician in a way amenable to measurement. A working party of the British Association defined measurement as 'the assignment of numerals to things so as to represent facts and conventions about them' (Stevens 1946). For the measurement of feelings, communication based on a simple visual analogue seems appropriate. Lines, with their boundaries clearly defined as the extremes of the feeling, serve well for marking (Hayes & Paterson 1921).