Assessment of Work-Related Emotional Experiences Test
How the Scales are Structured
Who Usually Takes This Test?
See How You Compare
Below is a preview of how scores are typically distributed across each scale.
Example Questions From the Test
- Almost never
- Rarely
- Quite rarely
- Quite often
- Often
- Almost always
- Almost never
- Rarely
- Fairly rarely
- Fairly often
- Often
- Almost always
- Almost never
- Rarely
- Fairly rarely
- Fairly often
- Often
- Almost always
Assessment of Work-Related Emotional Experiences Test - Description and methodology of the test
People who want to understand how their job feels day to day can use the Assessment of Work-Related Emotional Experiences Test as a focused self-reflection tool. Its questions consider whether professional activity brings positive emotion, requires sustained effort, feels meaningful, or has become emotionally flat, offering a snapshot of workplace wellbeing. The result offers a compact profile for noticing patterns in motivation, energy, purpose, and wellbeing.
What This Assessment Explores
Rather than reducing work feelings to one score, the questionnaire separates pleasure, emptiness, energy, and purpose. The statements address enjoyment, boredom, emotional absence, effort, strain, and connection with what matters. For someone exploring emotional experiences at work, the contrast between dimensions clarifies whether work feels rewarding, demanding, detached, or significant.
The four displayed indices describe the profile:
- Enjoyment Index (1-6) shows satisfaction and positive emotion: Low pleasure (1-2), Moderate pleasure (3-4), or High pleasure (5-6).
- Emptiness Index (1-6) reflects inner emptiness and low satisfaction: Low emptiness (1-2), Moderate emptiness (3-4), or High emptiness (5-6).
- Effort (1-6) measures energy expenditure and striving: Low effort (1-2), Moderate effort (3-4), or High effort (5-6).
- Meaning Index (1-6) reflects perceived significance and purpose: Low meaning (1-2), Moderate meaning (3-4), or High meaning (5-6).
Methodology and Evidence Base
Six response options run from Almost never to Almost always. Statements combine enjoyment and purpose with strain, boredom, emotional absence, and emptiness, so a high response is not automatically favorable. Results condense into four displayed indices; because no weighting formula is stated, the ranges cannot reveal exact points assigned to individual items.
The questionnaire is conceptually consistent with Warr’s work-related affective well-being measure, which treats pleasurable and unpleasant work affect as distinct dimensions. Warr’s later work places purpose and satisfaction within occupational experience. Bakker and Demerouti’s engagement model contextualizes energetic investment, while Weiss and Cropanzano’s Affective Events Theory explains how workplace events shape emotional reactions. These models provide context rather than authorship, adaptation, or validation of this questionnaire.
The displayed bands function as descriptive categories for this questionnaire, so its result is descriptive rather than diagnostic. As a self-report questionnaire about emotions at work, it is most useful for identifying patterns to reflect on rather than treating one score as a complete account. Current workload, recent events, mood, self-awareness, and willingness to answer candidly can influence the self-report.
- Warr, Peter. (1990). The measurement of well-being and other aspects of mental health. Journal of Occupational Psychology, 63(3), 193-210. 10.1111/j.2044-8325.1990.tb00521.x
- Warr, Peter. (2007). Work, Happiness, and Unhappiness. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
- Bakker, Arnold B., & Demerouti, Evangelia. (2008). Towards a model of work engagement. Career Development International, 13(3), 209-223. 10.1108/13620430810870476
- Weiss, Howard M., & Cropanzano, Russell. (1996). Affective Events Theory: A theoretical discussion of the structure, causes and consequences of affective experiences at work. Research in Organizational Behavior, 18, 1-74.
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