The Use of Photographs of Facial Expressions as a Response Scale

Abstract

The response scale of the Photo Anxiety Questionnaire (PAQ) is nonverbal and is composed of five photographs of a face showing an expression of anxiety. To test if subjects can discriminate accurately between these photographs, a pairwise comparison experiment was conducted with 488 subjects. The results of this experiment warrant the use of the photographs as a response scale. The subjects accurately discriminated between the photographs and ranked the photographs from relaxed to very anxious, as predicted. The agreement between the subjects is not very satisfactory, but this could be less a problem when using the PAQ, as the PAQ photographs are presented in ascending order of anxiety level. Because the female photographs were judged to be more anxious than the equivalent male photographs and the results of the female photographs were more satisfactory, we suggest that only female photographs be used with both male and female respondents.