title: Computer scoring of the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale.
abstract: The Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS; Lane, Quinlan, Schwartz, Walker, & Zeitlan, 1990) is the most commonly used measure of differentiation and complexity in the use of emotion words and is associated with important clinical outcomes. Hand scoring the LEAS is time consuming. Existing programs for scoring open-ended responses cannot mimic LEAS hand scoring. Therefore, Leaf and Barchard (2006) developed the Program for Open-Ended Scoring (POES) to score the LEAS. In this article, we report a study in which the reliability and validity of POES scoring were examined. In the study, we used three participant types (adult community members, university students, children), three LEAS versions (paper based, computer based, and the LEAS for children), and a diverse set of criterion variables. Across this variety of conditions, the four POES scoring methods had internal consistencies and validities that were comparable to hand scoring, indicating that POES scoring can be used in clinical practice and other applied settings in which hand scoring is impractical.
authors.affiliation: University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Nevada 89154-5030, USA. barchard@unlv.nevada.edu
authors.forename: Kimberly A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Barchard
authors.forename: Jane
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bajgar
authors.forename: Duncan Ermini
authors.initials: DE
authors.lastname: Leaf
authors.forename: Richard D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Lane
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001364:Awareness; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000098:blood supply; D002648:Child; D001330:Electronic Data Processing / Q000379:methods*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007807:Language Tests; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012039:Regional Blood Flow / Q000502:physiology; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012984:Software