Emotional Processing and its use in research in India

University of Mumbai

Dr. Anuradha Sovani, Clinical Psychologist and Psychotherapist, and a faculty member of the Department of Applied Psychology, (www.mu.ac.in) and a Consultant and Trustee of the Institute for Psychological Health, Thane, Maharashtra (iph@healthymind.org) has been working on Dr. Baker’s EPS for a while. Some of the highlights:

• Initial work was done with the older 53 item version of the EPS. Data was collected with a normal population of graduate youth from metropolitan India, specifically Mumbai, the capital of the state of Maharashtra, and the financial capital of India.

Mumbai is a cosmopolitan city, adding to the generalizability of the findings on the EPS. Findings showed that respondents find the items (in English) easy to understand, but feel that choosing the appropriate response option requires some thought.

• The next step was to work on language versions of the tests usable in India. Two languages were chosen initially, Hindi, which is the national language of India, and Marathi, which is the state language of Maharashtra. The 53 item EPS was translated to both these languages, using a panel of three judges for each language version. Each of these translators was a mental health professional fluent with the language being used.

A back translation procedure was then used to convert the Indian language versions back to English. These back translations were completed by three other mental health professionals, once again fluent with the language being used, and blind to the original EPS items. The back-translations were communicated to Dr. Baker and his team in October 2007, and found to have high accuracy.

• Pdf versions of the scales in Hindi and Marathi are available with Dr. Sovani.

• Further work was taken up with the EPS in 2008, using specific sample groups.

            A study conducted by Ms. Jeni Desai, involved assessing differences in emotional processing across people with psychological disorders and control groups. The diagnostic groups chosen were N=15 of people with schizophrenia, major depressive disorder and anxiety disorder. The anxiety group showed higher scores on suppressed, unregulated and impoverished emotional processing; people with schizophrenia had the highest scores on the avoidance factor of the EPS; people with depression scored highest on unprocessed emotions. The Indian language versions developed by Dr. Sovani were used for this study.

            Another study was conducted, once again using all language versions of the EPS, administered to people with and without diabetes, assessing differences across gender and age. Correlations of EPS total and factor scores with the GHQ were also computed. This study was conducted by Ms. Pankti Gada. Dr. Sovani’s Indian language test translations were used for this study as well.

.            A third study, conducted by Ms. Aditi Shevde focused on three groups suffering from chronic medical conditions, viz Cancer, Diabetes and HIV. A disease free age matched control group was included in the study. 10 males and 10 females each, suffering from one of the three conditions were assessed, after obtaining appropriate consent, hence total N=80. Once again, the Indian language versions were used in this study. The highest EPS scores were obtained by female respondents with HIV, followed by males with Cancer. Scores were also assessed factor wise.

Dr. Anuradha Sovani is currently working on Hindi and Marathi versions of the STAXI - 2, after obtaining due permission from Dr. Spielberger and PAR associates. The next study planned involves studying the association of EPS and STAXI-2 total and factor scores, using both English as well as Indian language versions of both tools.