An Autonomic Nervous System Response Inventory (ANSRI): scaling, reliability, and cross-validation

The Autonomic Nervous System Response Inventory (ANSRI) was designed to elicit individuals' self-reported patterns of peripheral physiological response to emotion-provoking stimuli. Fifty-one items reflecting such responses were rated as having been present (1 = absent to 5 = intense) during prototypical emotional situations drawn from experience, which were reconstructed and imagined by a subject. Items were rated for each of five conditions, four of which were emotions (fear, anger, sadness, joy) and one of which was an activation control condition (physical activity). Scales were developed to describe the relative activity of different physiological response systems: P scales based on physiological coherence of items and F scales based on factor analytic item clusters. The derivation and contents of the scales are described, and the following psychometric data are reported: test-retest reliabilities and internal consistency coefficients (original and cross-validation samples), factor analyses, and cross-validation of factors. Data indicate that the ANSRI and most of its scales are sufficiently reliable and replicable to warrant validity research.