Psychometric Evaluation of the Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test in Turkish Samples

Objective: Implicit affect is a concept distinct from explicit affect as it describes the affect processed by the individual at a preconscious level. The aim of this research is to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Turkish form of the Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test (IPANAT-TR), originally developed by Quirin et al. (2009a) to measure affect indirectly. Method: The study data comprised of psychology and sociology students from Ege University, and full-time and part-time employees from public and private organizations in Izmir. A pilot study was carried out with a group of 57 undergraduate students in order to select the artificial words to be used in the scale. Subsequently the scale was sent to a total of 938 participants, comprising 569 students and 369 employees. Test-retest reliability was assessed with 46 participants after a one-week interval and with 55 participants after a four-week interval. Results: The principal components analysis showed a clear two-factor structure for the IPANAT-TR. The internal consistency scores were 0.92 for Implicit Positive Affect (IPA) and 0.85 for Implicit Negative Affect (INA). The one-week and four-week test retest reliability estimates varied between 0.51 and 0.75. The construct validity assessments showed that the expected relationships between the IPANAT-TR and tested constructs were mostly confirmed. The results of measurement invariance analysis showed that the IPANAT-TR has full measurement invariance across employee and student samples. Conclusion: The results of the reliability, validity and measurement invariance analyses carried out in the current study demonstrated that the IPANAT-TR is a reliable and valid measurement instrument to assess implicit affect.