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Positive and Negative Emotional Experiences in Adolescents across 32 Countries: Cross-National and Gender Differences

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Abstract

Despite a growing interest in adolescent subjective well-being, cross-cultural research on positive and negative affect in adolescents has been surprisingly scarce. Moreover, a cross-cultural evaluation of affective well-being measures in adolescents has lagged behind research in adults. The present study evaluated the cross-national and gender invariance of the Scale of Positive and Negative Experience (SPANE), using adolescent samples from 32 countries (N = 17,489; age range = 14–19) spanning five continents. The original two-factor structure of the SPANE was supported in 29 of the 32 countries. We could establish partial metric invariance of the SPANE across countries and full or partial scalar invariance across gender in 18 and 11 countries, respectively. The alignment method showed evidence for approximate invariance across countries, allowing for cross-national means comparisons of positive and negative affect. In most countries, girls reported higher levels of negative affect, and no substantial gender differences in positive affect were observed. Cross-national differences in mean levels of positive and negative affect yielded complex findings. Our results suggest that the SPANE is a solid candidate for measuring emotional experiences among adolescents in large-scale cross-national studies.

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Data Availability

All materials, including datasets and analysis syntaxes can be found at: https://osf.io/wg7ae/.

Notes

  1. The Children’s Worlds study conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic on samples of 7–15-year-old children included the same set of six items for measuring affective well-being.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the participants for taking part in the study.

Funding

The study is financially supported by the Science Fund of the Republic of Serbia, GRANT No. 1520 (Project title: Identity orientations and mental health in adolescence: Examining the roles of basic psychological needs and culture – IDIOMATIC). The Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency supported the work of Andreja Avsec, Tina Kavčič, and Gaja Zager Kocjan (research core funding numbers P5-0110 and P5-0062). Marta Kowal was supported by the Foundation for Polish Science (FNP) START scholarship.

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Veljko Jovanović contributed to Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Funding Acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Resources, Supervision, Writing – Original Draft Preparation, Writing – Review & Editing; Vesna Gavrilov-Jerković, Milica Lazić, Vojana Obradović, Dušana Šakan, Aleksandar Tomašević, and Marija Zotović-Kostić, contributed to Funding Acquisition, Investigation, and Writing – Review & Editing; Sabirah Adams, Rebeca Aritio Solana, Christ Billy Aryanto, Andreja Avsec, Ali Bakhshi, Michael Bender, Sophie Berjot, Sonia Betancourth Zambrano, Andreja Brajša-Žganec, Yunier Broche-Pérez, Carmen Buzea, Rosario Cabello, Rosalinda Cassibba, Judith Cavazos-Arroyo, Fatemeh Daemi, Diego D. Díaz-Guerra, Marija Džida, Mona Eidelsburger, Pablo Fernández-Berrocal, Evelyn Fernández-Castillo, Eduardo Fonseca-Pedrero, Tomasz Frackowiak, Teresa Freire, Biljana Gjoneska, Jesús Guerrero-Alcedo, Md Jamil Hossain, Jessie Hillekens, Stefan Höfer, Tareq Mahmud, Naved Iqbal, Szilvia Jámbori, Mohsen Joshanloo, Ljiljana Kaliterna Lipovčan, Tina Kavčič, Marta Kowal, Marija Krstevska Taseva, Kwok Kit Tong, Denisse Manrique-Millones, Alessia Mariano, Michal Misiak, Pasquale Musso, Javier Ortuño Sierra, Ioana Orzea, Ahmet Özaslan, Joonha Park, Marija Pašić, Rasa Pilkauskaitė Valickienė, Rogelio Puente-Díaz, Lizbeth Puerta-Sierra, Gordana Ristevska Dimitrovska, S. Craig Roberts, Puji Tania Ronauli, Shazly Savahl, Danielius Serapinas, Sok Ian Kuan, Agnieszka Sorokowska, Piotr Sorokowski, Dijana Sulejmanović, Mst Sadia Sultana, Sze Man Yuen, Erzsébet Szél, Henri Tilga, Wenceslao Unanue, Jesús Unanue, Marieke van Egmond, Murat Yıldırım, Gaja Zager Kocjan, and Laura Zamarian contributed to Investigation and Writing – Review & Editing.

All authors have agreed to the final submitted version.

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Correspondence to Veljko Jovanović.

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Ethics Approval

The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad (Approval Code: 02-313/4 − 1: Approval Date: May 16, 2022), and by the institutional ethics committee or review board in each country involved in the present study.

Patient Consent Statement

The parent/guardian consent was obtained in countries where parental consent was required for a certain age. In other countries, informed consent was obtained and the sample included only adolescents who are free to consent to research participation according to domestic legislation (for example, in the Netherlands and Serbia, adolescents are free to consent to research participation with 16 and 15 years, respectively).

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Jovanović, V., Adams, S., Aritio-Solana, R. et al. Positive and Negative Emotional Experiences in Adolescents across 32 Countries: Cross-National and Gender Differences. Applied Research Quality Life (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-025-10486-2

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