ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Quantitative Psychology and Measurement
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1579235
Reliability and Validity of the Brief Attention and Mood Scale of 7 Items (BAMS-7): A Self-Administered, Online Assessment
Provisionally accepted
- Department of Research and Development, Lumos Labs, San Francisco, United States
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Changes in technology, regulatory guidance, and COVID-19 have spurred an explosion in online studies in the social and clinical sciences. This surge has led to a need for brief and accessible instruments that are designed and validated specifically for self-administered, online use. Addressing this opportunity, the Brief Attention and Mood Scale of 7 Items (BAMS-7) was developed and validated in five cohorts across four studies to assess real-world attention and mood in one instrument. In Study 1, an exploratory factor analysis was run on responses from an initial nine-item survey in a very large, healthy, adult sample (N=75,019, ages 18-89 years). Two brief subscales comprising seven items total were defined and further characterized: one for Attention, the other for Mood. Study 2 established convergent validity with existing questionnaires in a separate sample (N=150). Study 3 demonstrated knowngroups validity of each subscale using a large sample (N=58,411) of participants reporting a lifetime diagnosis of ADHD, anxiety, or depression, alongside the healthy sample of Study 1. The Attention subscale had superior discriminability for ADHD and the Mood subscale for anxiety and depression. Study 4 applied confirmatory factor analysis to data (N=3,489) from a previously published cognitive training study that used the initial nine-item survey, finding that the Attention and Mood subscales were sensitive to the intervention (compared to an active control) to different degrees. In sum, the psychometric properties and extensive normative data set (N=75,019 healthy adults) of the BAMS-7 may make it a useful instrument in assessing real-world attention and mood.
Keywords: Brief Attention and Mood Scale of 7 Items, BAMS-7, validity, Reliability, ROC, brain training, Cognition, emotion
Received: 18 Feb 2025; Accepted: 31 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Madore, Osman, Kerlan and Schafer. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Robert J. Schafer, Department of Research and Development, Lumos Labs, San Francisco, United States
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