The SPANE Replicates in Japan (Sumi, 2014)

The Question

Does the SPANE work outside Western samples, once the feeling words are translated into a language with very different conventions around emotional expression?

What They Found

• In a Japanese sample, the twelve-item SPANE reproduced the same two-factor structure (positive feelings, negative feelings) reported by Diener et al. (2010), with no item misloading under translation
• Internal reliability for the Japanese SPANE was Cronbach's alpha of 0.89 on the positive subscale and 0.85 on the negative subscale, consistent with the US validation values of 0.87 and 0.81
• The Japanese SPANE correlated strongly with established Japanese-language well-being measures and with the translated Flourishing Scale, replicating the convergent-validity pattern from the US data
• Japanese mean scores ran somewhat lower than the US college mean, in line with the broader pattern that East Asian samples report less intense positive affect than Western samples on hedonic scales

How They Tested It

• Recruited a Japanese university sample and ran the translated SPANE alongside the Flourishing Scale and existing Japanese well-being measures in a single survey
• Used confirmatory factor analysis to test whether the two-factor (positive, negative) structure from Diener's original paper fit the Japanese data
• Compared internal reliability, factor loadings, and convergent-validity correlations against the values reported in the original US validation

Caveats

• Single-country, single-language replication on a university sample; broader claims about cross-cultural generalisability rest on the cumulative evidence from many such validations rather than on this paper alone
• Japanese respondents are documented to use the middle of rating scales more often than American respondents, which can compress score ranges independent of any real difference in feelings
• Like every well-being instrument here, the SPANE is a self-report measure, and the negative feeling items (angry, afraid) are particularly sensitive to social-desirability pressure