Measure of Emotional Episodes with Music (MEEM): development and psychometric evaluation of a modular instrument

The present research reports the development and psychometric evaluation of the Measure of Emotional Episodes with Music (MEEM), a modular instrument designed to capture situational emotional experiences involving music. Guided by theory and extensive content-validity procedures, we assessed, refined, and confirmed a set of constructs and items intended to elucidate how music functions within emotional episodes. MEEM comprises five distinct scales, each representing a construct that is operationalised through two to three sub-constructs and measured through 6-9 items. Across two experiments, confirmatory factor analyses provided strong support for the proposed sub-construct structures within each scale, demonstrating good model fit and clear differentiation among sub-constructs. During the development, the labelling of several sub-constructs was refined to reflect empirical evidence indicating that the best-performing items captured more specific facets of the broader constructs. Initial evidence for construct validity was indicated by systematic associations between MEEM scales and two complementary types of emotion ratings. Together, these results support the internal structure and validity of the instrument. MEEM is explicitly designed to assess emotional states—understood as dynamic, situation-bound processes grounded in functional contexts—rather than stable trait-like tendencies. This distinguishes it from existing instruments that primarily assess habitual music use but are applied as proxies for state experiences. Moreover, MEEM is the first instrument that explicitly operationalises the situational and contextual dimensions of emotional experiences with music. A key strength of MEEM lies in its modular and adaptable design. The full instrument or selected scales can be administered depending on the research or applied context, enabling targeted assessment of music-related emotional processes. MEEM thus provides a flexible, theory-driven framework for advancing empirical research on emotional episodes with music and offers a foundation for future validation and cross-contextual applications.