Cross-cultural validation of the Profile of Mood Scale (POMS): Evaluation of the psychometric properties of Short Screening Versions

Ileana Schmalbach ¹ Bjarne Schmalbach ^1* Alireza Aghababa ² Ralf Brand ³ Yu-Kai Chang ⁴ Cihat Çiftçi ⁵ Hassan Mohamed Elsangedy ⁶ Jesús Fernández ⁷ Zhijian Huang ⁸ Hafrún Kristjánsdóttir ⁹ Luca Mallia ¹⁰ Sanaz Nosrat ¹¹ Caterina Pesce ¹⁰ Daði Rafnsson ⁹ Daniel Medina ¹² Sinika Timme ³ Katja Petrowski ¹

• ¹ University Medical Centre, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Mainz, Germany
• ² Department of Sport Psychology, Sport Sciences Research Institute of Iran, Tehran, Iran, Teheran, Iran
• ³ Sport and Exercise Psychology, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany, Potsdam, Germany
• ⁴ Department of Physical Education and Sport Sciences, National Taiwan Normal Univer-sity, Taipei, Taiwan, Taipei, Taiwan
• ⁵ Department Of Sport Science, Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University, Ankara, Turkey, Ankara, Türkiye
• ⁶ Department of Physical Education, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, Brazil, Natal, Brazil
• ⁷ Department of Physical Education and Sports, University of Seville, Seville, Spain, Seville, Spain
• ⁸ Department of Physical Education, Hubei University, Wuhan, China, Wuhan, China
• ⁹ Department of Sport Science, Reykjavik University, Reykjavik, Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland
• ¹⁰ Department of Exercise, Human and Health Sciences, Foro Italico University of Rome, Rome, Lazio, Italy
• ¹¹ Department of Health Sciences, Lehman College, City University of New York, New York, USA, New York, United States
• ¹² Department of Physical Education and Sports, Faculty of Education Sciences, University of Seville, Seville, Spain

The Profile of Mood States (POMS) is one of the most widely applied scales for measuring mood. Considering the advantages of short scales and increased international research, the aim of the present study was to evaluate cross-culturally the psychometric properties of a short 16-item version of the POMS. Data were collected from 15,693 participants across ten different countries worldwide. Initially, we identified the original versions of the POMS in various languages. Subsequently, we selected 16 items based on the previously validated short form (POMS-16) for analysis. Psychometric properties of the POMS were then evaluated in samples from each studied population for each language version. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to assess its invariance across age groups and gender, alongside reliability estimation. Most language versions of the POMS-16 showed good fit in the four-factor model, except for Chinese traditional and Turkish versions. Reliability was generally high, except for the Vigor subscale in a small subset of languages. Regarding measurement invariance, most language versions were invariant across gender and age groups, except for the Farsi language version across gender, and Chinese, Farsi, Finnish, and Turkish versions across age. These findings enhance the crosscultural applicability of the POMS-16, contributing to its utility in diverse populations and thus enhancing comparability of the results. In addition, we introduced the first versions of the POMS in Farsi, Finnish, and Icelandic.