What Gets Measured Gets Better: Measuring the Meaning of Patterns of Emotional Responses in Soweto

Given the history of the past, black South African students from different settings face unique academic and emotional climate. Using the Differential Emotions Scale (DES) which focuses on ten discrete emotions, and building upon Boyle's (1984) seminal work, this study reports a repeated-measure multiple discriminant function analysis for individual items across raters. The findings further indicate that majority of the DES items are sensitive indicators of the different innate and universal facial expressions. However, the construct requires revision so that it offers the examiner maximum flexibility in assessment at diverse levels, in terms of more extensive norming and programmatic replication. In brief, the DES potentially has much to offer provided that it is adequately developed for use in non-Western nations or contexts.