Short CommunicationThe stability of the morning affect scale across age and gender
Highlights
► Changes in morning–evening preference appears to be age dependent. ► Correlation supported the age related changes in morningness. ► Morningness scales are based on young samples and thus, fail to fit adult groups. ► Results based on the Composite Scale of Morningness support this argument. ► The morning affect scale was successfully replicated across age bands and gender.
Introduction
Morningness and eveningness (ME) represents a continuum along which individuals may be placed to reflect their preference for activity either earlier or later in the day (Natale & Cicogna, 2002). This behavior may also be influenced by a genetic component (Dijk & Archer, 2010). Many studies have focused on improving the psychometric properties of ME scales (Caci et al., 2009, Smith et al., 2002) and setting cut-off points to identify extreme types (Natale & Cicogna, 2002). A remaining limitation is the assumption that ME is ‘fixed’ at some point in time and therefore, that scales that are typically developed on young student samples can be used with older groups. There is mounting evidence that ME scores are age dependent and it may be desirable to develop measures that are not biased by age (Caci et al., 2005, Paine et al., 2006).
Studies that draw upon adolescent samples demonstrate a shift from morningness to eveningness until approximately 20 years of age (Roenneberg et al., 2004). An evening orientation is reported in many studies of young adults (Adan et al., 2005, Chelminski et al., 1997) and subsequently, a shift back to morningness is reported in several countries (Di Milia and Muller, 2012, Paine et al., 2006). In Australia and France this change is reported to begin at approximately 25 and 35 years of age, respectively (Caci et al., 2009, Di Milia and Bohle, 2009).
ME scales are typically developed using convenience samples of university aged students and many have a strong female bias. For example, in a study of the Composite Scale of Morningness (CSM) in six countries the mean age ranged from 19 to 23 years and females accounted for 61–79% of the samples (Smith et al., 2002). Similarly, in a five nation study the mean age ranged from 18 to 23 years and females comprised 60–74% of the samples (Caci et al., 2005).
The age and gender bias associated with ME studies may in part explain the inability to replicate the posited factor structure in older working samples that are predominately male. For example, one study developed a model structure based on a student sample that contained 66% females and a mean age of 19 years was unable to be replicated in a working sample with a mean age of 40 years and contained 90% males (Di Milia, Folkard, Hill, & Walker, 2011). Monk and Kupfer (2007) identified a three factor solution using the Morningness–Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ, Horne & Östberg, 1976) in a gender balanced sample with a mean age of 35 years. However, in an older sample four items failed to load leading Monk and Kupfer to suggest the ‘morning alertness’ factor is more age related while the ‘evening sleepiness’ factor is less age dependent.
The present study has two goals. The first is to test whether a factor structure developed on a young sample is applicable across older age groups. We first develop a factor solution using a sample aged <30 years and then use confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to assess the fit in three older age groups. We also calculate Tucker’s congruence coefficient as an additional indicator of how well the factors fit across the age groups. The second goal is to test the applicability of the ‘morning affect’ (MA) scale across the age groups. The MA scale is made up of a subset of items (3, 4, 5, 12) from the CSM (Smith, Reilly, & Midkiff, 1989) and may be considered a ‘pure’ measure of morning preference. These items only refer to morning activity and the factor has been found in French (Caci et al., 2009) and Australian students (Di Milia & Bohle, 2009), as well as a working sample (Di Milia & Muller, 2012).
Section snippets
Sample
We pooled data from several German samples reported elsewhere (Randler, 2008) to obtain a sample with a wide age range (20–79 years). The data did not contain missing values. These data were collected following approval from the Ethics committee at the University of Education and informed consent from the participants. Participants were not paid for their participation.
The participants provided demographic data and completed a number of measures including the German version of the CSM (Randler,
Results
The sample comprised of 198 males and 629 females (75%). The overall mean age was 36.65 years (SD = 12.43) and gender differences were not found. The students’ (n = 356) mean age (M = 26.62, SD = 6.24) was significantly lower (p < .001) than the worker (n = 471) group (M = 44.43, SD = 10.25). Statistical tests for normality are not appropriate in large samples but skewness (−.28) and kurtosis (−.21) were not excessive (Hair, Black, Babin, & Anderson, 2010). Controlling for age we found that females had a higher
Discussion
We proposed that age related changes in morningness may explain why scales developed on young adult samples are less useful when applied in older adult samples. Our results appear to be consistent with this argument and provide additional support for Monk and Kupfer (2007) findings. First we showed that the two component CSM model based on a young sample was not a good fit in the older age groups. One explanation is that this model contains an evening component which is less applicable in older
Acknowledgement
The first author acknowledges the support provided by the University of Education during his sabbatical visit.
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A six-factor structure of individual variation in the tendencies to become sleepy and to sleep at different times of the day
2021, Acta PsychologicaCitation Excerpt :For instance, the MEQ was found to lack the postulated unidimensional structure and contains items with low item-total correlations (Budkevich et al., in press; Larsen, 1985; Monk & Kupfer, 2007; Neubauer, 1992; Panjeh et al., 2021; Smith et al., 1989; Wendt, 1977; reviewed by Di Milia et al., 2013). Analysis of factorial structure of another morningness-eveningness scale, the Composite Scale of Morningness, suggested good replicability across gender and age groups only for a ‘pure’ measure of morning preference that includes a subset of items referring to morning activity (Di Milia & Randler, 2013). Accounting for such subsets of items might be of importance for the studies of associations of morning-evening preference with psychological and psychopathological traits.
Psychometric properties of a Japanese version of Composite Scale of Morningness
2019, HeliyonCitation Excerpt :People who show a more extreme eveningness stay up late at night, rise at a later time in the morning, and perform best mentally and physically in the late afternoon or evening (Randler, 2008). A growing body of research examines how chronotype (morningness-eveningness) can be conceptualized and measured adequately in different cultures and under different circumstances (Di Milia and Randler, 2013; Levandovski et al., 2013). Although the terms ‘morning-types’ or ‘larks’ and ‘evening-types’ or ‘owls’ are frequently used in studies and questionnaires, morningness-eveningness is better treated as a continuum, with most people falling somewhere between the two extremes (Adan et al., 2012; Natale and Cicogna, 2002).
Morningness-eveningness in a large sample of German adolescents and adults
2016, HeliyonCitation Excerpt :This indicates that after the dramatic turn towards eveningness and the less pronounced turn towards morningness, a plateau during early adulthood is achieved. This stability of chronotype fits into other German data reported by Di Milia and Randler (2013), which were obtained with a different questionnaire, the Composite Scale of Morningness (CSM; Randler, 2008), however, the CSM and the rMEQ are correlated with 0.8 to 0.9 (Randler, 2009), indicating they measure a similar construct. Even when focusing on the single items, the age effects remain similar.
Sleep, sleep timing and chronotype in animal behaviour
2014, Animal BehaviourCitation Excerpt :This ‘morning affect’ could be assessed, for example, by questions such as ‘How alert do you feel after getting up?’ ( Di Milia & Randler, 2013). Although this cannot easily be assessed in other animals, there might be individual differences in reaction times, vigilance or foraging efficiency in animals depending on time of day or in the first minutes after awakening, thus also representing some kind of ‘morning affect’.
Evening adolescents: The role of family relationships and pubertal development
2014, Journal of AdolescenceCitation Excerpt :Among adolescents, evening preference has been associated with an array of disturbances including emotional problems (Gaina et al., 2006), eating disorders (Schmidt & Randler, 2010), behavioral and health risk difficulties (Gau et al., 2007), poor physical and mental health, low self-esteem, and negative family relationship and school functioning (Randler, 2011). While increasing age in adulthood is associated with a greater tendency toward morningness (Di Milia & Randler, 2013), younger people are likely to rate themselves as more evening-oriented (Carskadon, Vieria, & Acebo, 1993). This shift occurs around the age of 12–13 years, it has widely been described all around the world, and, consequently it has been considered that this change is based on biological changes throughout puberty (Hagenauer, Perryman, Lee, & Carskadon, 2009).
Morningness-eveningness orientation and attitude change: Evidence for greater systematic processing and attitude change at optimal time-of-day
2013, Personality and Individual DifferencesCitation Excerpt :The issue of the cut-off scores for the MEQ to classify people into M- vs. E-types has been widely debated (e.g., Caci, Deschaux, Adan, & Natale, 2009). The debate is made more complicated by the fact that the MEQ has been translated into many languages and employed on different samples and that morningness–eveningness itself might vary over time (Di Milia & Randler, 2013). Originally Horne and Östberg (1976) suggested participants should be classified into five categories: definitely morning (70–86), moderately morning (59–69), intermediate (42–58), moderately evening (31–41), definitely evening (16–30).