Computer anxiety and measurement of mood change

摘要

Approximately 30% of the UK population have been characterised as suffering, to some extent, from computer anxiety, showing either physiological, cognitive, or negatively affective reactions when working with computers. In this study, the relationship between computer anxiety and self-ratings of mood change was investigated. Mood was measured either by a computerized form of visual analog scales or by an identical test administered by paper-and-pencil. Positive mood change was manipulated by a modified Velten-type Mood Induction Procedure (VMIP, Velten, 1968) administered via a computer. Undergraduate student volunteers (40 males and 68 females) completed visual analog mood scales before and after the VMIP. The correlation between self-ratings of mood and the computer anxiety scores was significantly greater in the computer compared with the paper-and-pencil groups. Computer anxiety related to measured mood when the mood measurements were collected using the computerized procedure but not the paper procedure. The implications of these findings for the clinical application of computerized mood assessment are discussed.