ИСТИНА

Introduction. The negative emotional state of an adolescent can facilitate a crime, including a felony. For further effective prevention of negative emotional states in young offenders requires timely and preferably brief assessment methods. Objectives. To compare the capabilities of the PANAS and SPANE scales to the assessment of the emotional state of young offenders. Methods. The sample included 56 males aged 15 to 18 years (M=16.5; SD=0.8): 32 subjects were in pretrial detention and 24 subjects have already been convicted. The emotional state of adolescents was assessed by means of a brief form of Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) and of the Scale of Positive and Negative Experience (SPANE). Results. According to the PANAS scale, the values of positive affect between the two groups of participants do not differ significantly, and the values of negative affect differ only at the trend level (the Mann-Whitney U test: U=214.5 p=0.077): the level of negative affect in adolescents from pretrial detention is higher than in convicts. When comparing the results of two groups on a SPANE revealed that convicts have significantly higher level of positive feelings (U=162.5 p=0.030) and the affect balance (U=131.0 p=0.004), and significantly lower level of negative feelings (U=124.5 p=0.003) than adolescents from pretrial detention. Conclusions. The results showed that the use of the SPANE allows a more differentiated assessment of the emotional state of different groups of young offenders comparing the PANAS. The research was supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, with the Grant 17-29-02506.