A psychometric evaluation of the Swedish version of the Responses to Positive Affect
questionnaire
Sammanfattning
Background: Previous research mainly focused on responses to negative affect in relation to
depression, and less on responses to positive affect. Cognitive responses to positive affect are
interesting in the context of emotion regulation and emotion disorders: positive rumination is
associated to hypomania risk and bipolar disorder. There is to date no questionnaire in
Swedish that captures the phenomena of cognitive response styles. Aims: The aim of this
study was to investigate the replicability of the Responses to Positive Affect questionnaire
(RPA) in a newly translated Swedish version and to test its psychometric properties. Methods:
Swedish undergraduates ( n 111) completed a set of self-report questionnaires in a fi xed
order. Results: The hypothesized three-factor model was largely replicated in the subscales
Self-focused positive rumination, Emotion-focused positive rumination and Dampening. The
two positive rumination subscales were strongly associated with each other and current
positive affect. The subscales showed acceptable convergent and incremental validity with
concurrent measures of depression, hypomania, anxiety, repetitive negative thinking, and
positive and negative affect. The model explained 25% of the variance in hypomania, but fell
short in the explanation of depression. Conclusions: The Swedish version of the RPA shows
satisfactory reliability and initial fi ndings from a student sample indicate that it is a valid
measure comparable with the original RPA questionnaire. Results give emphasis to the
importance of further exploration of cognitive response styles in relation to psychopathology.