Design of a scale of linguistic behavior of emotional expression

Abstract

Emotional expression directly influences psychological well-being, especially during adolescence, a stage marked by intense emotional changes. This study aimed to design and validate a scale that measures emotional expression through linguistic behaviors: speech, writing, thought, inner speech, drawing, and body gestures. It evaluated the expression of emotions such as happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. Content validity was assessed by expert judges, and an exploratory factor analysis identified three key factors: internal expression (thought or inner speech), oral/body expression, and written/drawn expression. Criterion validity was also evaluated, showing that participants with greater knowledge and use of emotional synonyms demonstrated a higher capacity to express emotions. The results indicated that the scale explains 55.9% of the variance and has a reliability coefficient of 0.88. In addition, a KMO of 0.744, an SRMR of 0.0664, and Kelley’s criterion of 0.0685 were obtained. These indicators support the validity and reliability of the scale for measuring emotional expression in upper secondary school adolescents. The findings suggest that a broader emotional vocabulary is associated with better emotional expression, and that linguistic behaviors serve as effective channels for expressing emotions.