Emotional Processing Scale – Wellbeing: New UK and US norms

Hogrefe Ltd is pleased to announce the publication of new UK and US Working Population norms to support the popular Emotional Processing Scale – Wellbeing (EPS-W); a psychometric measure designed to support employees’ emotional processing and workplace wellbeing.

Due to a recognised need for new data to be collected in a post-Covid-19 world, which would form new norms to be used with the EPS-W, in late 2022, adults from working populations in the UK and US were sampled giving new norms which can be used with working adults aged 18 upwards.

The norm groups are made up of working adults aged 18–74 – 517 from the UK and 768 from the US. Those included in the norm groups were English-speaking and closely matched to the UK 2011 and 2021 Census and 2020 US Census, for gender, age, geographical location and ethnic groups, so that a representative sample would be achieved. Over 70% of each sample was aged between 25 and 64, with the largest number aged 35–49. The majority of the norm group had extensive (20 years or more) work experience and had jobs in a range of industry sectors, at different levels of seniority.

Parity was found between the mean scores of the EPS-W for the UK and US samples. When compared with the previous 2015 UK Healthy Adult norm group, there were some differences, as we might expect, in the scores for some of the dimensions which give us insights into how individuals manage some aspects of emotional processing.

We have published a revised version of the EPS-W Guide to Interpretation and Feedback which now includes information about the new norms. The Guide also includes background to the EPS-W measure, help with administering and interpreting it, as well as examples of useful applications in organisational settings.

When the EPS-W questionnaire is accessed via the Hogrefe Testsytem (HTS), it is easy to select the new norm groups and automated reports are generated. The Technical Report provides an easy-to-read summary of the person’s scores, showing their relative strengths and areas for development. The Personal Insight Report gives a detailed breakdown of results for the individual to refer to for self-development. If there is a certain profile of low scores, then ‘Daily Emotions Charts’ are automatically generated in the EPS-W Personal Insight Report. These help the individual to track their emotional processing by addressing particular situations which may have caused them stress and allows them to reflect on potential causes or triggers. As with our other tests, it is possible to generate multi-reports too which can be helpful when using this measure with teams.

To further help with understanding and using the EPS-W, a free eLearning programme is provided when the EPS-W is purchased. We will require non-psychologists and trained test users to have completed the eLearning before they use the EPS-W.

It is hoped that psychologists, HR Managers, organisational practitioners, academics and researchers alike will be interested in this recent development of the EPS-W and the tool’s benefits and applications. The EPS-W can be used with individuals or groups to provide support for developing self-awareness and insights into emotional health, perhaps as part of a wellbeing at work programme or intervention. The measure represents decades of research led by its author, who is an esteemed figure in his field and strongly believes that one’s emotional processing is directly linked to how we deal with stressful events and other challenges at work, such as onboarding, changing roles, returning to work, working remotely, leadership development, etc.

We welcome you to get in touch to find out more.