Incremental validity of complex affect dynamics in adolescents

Are complex indicators of affect dynamics (IAD) still valuable measures? Results from Dejonckheere et al. (2019) implied that current studies could not show any incremental validity of IAD. This study aims to correct this assumption, by using adolescents as a different population and modelling time as a continuous variable. The study used EMA data of 100 13- to 17-year-olds, where 3 PANAS assessments per day were collected over one week. Mean, variance and temporal regression statistics for positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) were calculated for each participant. In a hierarchical multiple regression, those three statistics were regressed on CES-D scores of participants. Results showed that, contrary to Dejonckheere et al. (2019), temporal regression of PA is a significant predictor of a relevant outcome, depressivity, above mean and variance, rendering IAD still useful constructs for future research.