The Structure And Measurement Of The Meta-Mood Of High School Students

The purpose of the current research was to investigate the structure of the meta-mood and develop a meta-mood questionnaire for high school students.On the basis of previous studies of meta-mood and emotional intelligence,and the theory of meta-cognition,the theoretical hypothesis about a two-dimensional structure of meta-mood was put forward.It was argued that the meta-mood included two objects(self-emotion and others' emotion) and three operating components(knowledge,awareness and regulation).According to the hypothesis,six sub-questionnaires were developed.They were the questionnaires of meta-mood knowledge to self-emotion and to others' emotion,meta-mood awareness to self-emotion and to others' emotion,meta-mood regulation to self-emotion and to others' emotion.Then the exploratory(EFA) and confirmatory factor analyses(CFA) were applied to examine the construct of the meta-mood.Finally,the validity and reliability of the questionnaires were analyzed and the characteristics and functions of high school students' meta-mood were discussed.Main results were as follows:(1) Meta-mood of high school students contained six components:self-emotional knowledge,others-emotional knowledge,self-emotional awareness,others-emotional awareness,self-emotional regulation and others-emotional regulation.The results of factor analyses showed that,self-emotional knowledge contained two factors named knowledge of self-emotional characteristics and knowledge of self-emotional strategies; others-emotional knowledge had two factors named knowledge of others-emotional characteristics and knowledge of others-emotional strategies;self-emotional awareness had five factors named self-emotional attention,self-emotional clarity/differentiation, self-emotional analysis,self-emotional introspection and self-emotional foresight; others-emotional awareness had three factors named others-emotional attention, others-emotional experience and others-emotional understanding;self-emotional regulation had four factors named self-emotional repair,self-anger control,self-emotional inhibition and self-emotional motivation;others-emotional regulation had only one factor.(2) 89 items,divided into six sub-questionnaires,were included in the Meta-mood Questionnaires for High School Students.Concerning content validity,most items classified by 4～5 psychology postgraduates were consistent to the hypothesis of the current research.Regarding construct validity,the result of EFA showed that the variance explained by the factors extracted from these sub-questionnaires was close to or more than 50.00%,and the correlation coefficients between the factors lied between 0.20～0.50. Meanwhile,the constructs of sub-questionnaires were supported by CFA with good fit indices as follows:x2/df lied between 1.65～4.13,RMSEA lied between 0.044～0.094,and the other indices,such as NFI,TLI,were close to or above 0.90.Concerning criterion-related validity,the correlation coefficients between sub-questionnaires and Emotional Intelligence Scale(EIS) were more than 0.60,and these between sub-questionnaires and Trait Meta-Mood Scale(TMMS) were more than 0.30.Moreover, good convergent and discriminative validity were obtained.The results of reliability of the sub-questionnaires and total questionnaires showed that the internal consistency reliability (Cronbach's a) lied between 0.79～0.90,the hail-split reliability were between 0.80～0.87,and six-weeks test-retest reliability were between 0.58～0.80.(3) Characteristics of high school students' meta-mood were described as follows:, firstly,the levels of the four factors within meta-mood knowledge from highest to lowest were:knowledge of self- emotional characteristics,knowledge of others-emotional characteristics,knowledge of self-emotional strategies,knowledge of others-emotional strategies.The levels the factors within self-emotional awareness from highest to lowest were:self-emotional attention,self-emotional analysis,self-emotional clarity, self-emotional introspection and foresight.The levels the factors within others-emotional awareness from highest to lowest were:others-emotional attention,others-emotional experience and others-emotional understanding.The levels the factors within self-emotional regulation from highest to lowest were:self-emotional repair,self-emotional inhibition,self-anger control and self-emotional motivation.Secondly,the correlations among the six components were analyzed.Meta-mood knowledge and awareness were closely related to each other,which both influenced meta-mood regulation positively. Thirdly,in the relationship between demographic variables and meta-mood,the level of the self-emotional clarity/differentiation,analysis and regulation of boys was higher than girls while boys had got fewer score than girls in the area of self-emotional attention and others-emotional experience.Students who acted as the class cadres could score higher than the others in most factors of the meta-mood.(4) In aspect of meta-mood function,first of all,components of self-emotional regulation seemed to be more efficient than awareness components in its effect on the emotional state and mental health.It could enhance individual's positive emotional experience whereas inhibit the negative emotion and psychological problems.Additionally, self-directed meta-mood had a positive predictive effect on the academic performance. Thirdly,both others-emotional attention and knowledge of others-emotional strategies had significant influence on interpersonal relationship.Lastly,others-emotional experience had an inhibitory effect on aggressive behaviors,which was realized indirectly through aggressive mind.The innovation of the research:(1) From a perspective of theory of meta-cognition, the study developed and verified the construct of meta-mood.(2) The research compiled a meta-mood questionnaire for high school students that fits the Chinese cultural background. (3) The characteristics and functions of meta-mood of high school students were preliminarily analyzed.