title: Women's perceptions of influences on their mood.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Knowledge of prevailing community ideas about mood determination can guide research about variability in mood. A random sample of urban Canadian women, aged 18-40 years (n = 507), was asked to compare the relative importance of three specified domains (physical health, social support, stress) as influences on their mood and then to list additional life experiences they considered important. They also rated the frequency and recurrence patterns (cyclicity) of their daily positive and negative moods.
  
  
  RESULTS
  More women reported a positive overall mood than negative mood. Of three domains studied, social support was listed as the greatest influence on positive mood and stress on negative mood in the bivariate tests. More frequent moods (both positive and negative) were more likely to be viewed as recurrent or cyclical. Patterns of influence for positive mood differed from those for negative mood. Multivariate modeling found that women reporting frequent positive mood were more often North American and employed full-time and likely to consider stress or lack of stress was unimportant as an influence on positive mood. The only factors in the model associated with frequent negative mood were the perception of physical health and stress as important influences on negative mood. Less than 5% cited menstrual cycle phase as an influence.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These subjective data suggest that women perceived a wide range of external, usually interpersonal, influences as relevant to their mood, however menstrual cycle was rarely mentioned. Perceptions of influences on mood are statistically related to frequency of moods. In addition, ethnicity and paid employment are independently associated with positive mood.
authors.affiliation: Women's College Research Institute, Toronto, Canada. sarah.romans@wchospital.ca
authors.forename: Sarah E
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Romans
authors.forename: Eriola
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Asllani
authors.forename: Rose F
authors.initials: RF
authors.lastname: Clarkson
authors.forename: Soumia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Meiyappan
authors.forename: Michele J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Petrovic
authors.forename: Diana
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Tang
mesh_terms: D000203:Activities of Daily Living; D000328:Adult; D001294:Attitude to Health; D002170:Canada; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D007508:Irritable Mood; D012922:Social Change; D012931:Social Environment; D012944:Social Support; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000453:epidemiology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014505:Urban Population / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D016387:Women's Health; D055815:Young Adult