Yes And No

Flow State Scale

Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow State Scale

The Flow State Scale (FSS) is most frequently seen in academic research and in sports psychology (Jackson & Marsh, 1996). The 36-item instrument measures Flow’s nine dimensions along nine four-item scales; these pertain directly to those dimensions identified and described by Csikszentmihalyi’s earlier work (1990).

The scales comprise 5-point Likert scale questions and are generally either administered by asking the participant to recall a specific Flow experience or as post-event flow assessments. Some sample items are shown below. The Likert scales themselves are standard and uniform throughout the test, ranging from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree (Jackson & Marsh, 1996).

• I was challenged, but I believed my skills would allow me to meet the challenge.
• My attention was focused entirely on what I was doing.
• I really enjoyed the experience.
• It was no effort to keep my mind on what was happening.
• I felt I was competent enough to meet the high demands of the situation.
• I was not concerned with how I was presenting myself.
• The challenge and my skills were at an equally high level.
• I did things spontaneously and automatically without having to think.
• At times, it almost seemed like things were happening in slow motion.

Since its initial construction, the instrument has been adapted to enhance its ability to measure certain dimensions, resulting in the shorter FSS-2 and the Dispositional Flow scale-2 (DFS-2) (Jackson & Eklund, 2002).

All three of the scales we have looked at hold up reasonably well as psychometrically reliable instruments – two exceptions to this relate to the lower internal consistency of the self-awareness and time subscales in the short-form tests (Marsh & Jackson, 1999; Jackson et al., 2008).

A Look at Flow and Happiness

Both psychological and subjective well-being have been empirically linked by numerous researchers over time (e.g. Bryce & Haworth, 2002; Heo et al., 2010). By its very nature, Flow is also related to lower (or a loss of) self-consciousness, suggesting that it is at least related to happiness – if not a means of feeling positive emotions.

Indeed, happiness and a sense of reward are associated with the autotelic experience of being in a Flow state, although the individual activities that we all participate in to enter the state itself are different.

The Research on Flow Experience

We’ve only looked quite briefly so far at how the Flow concept has been used with other theoretical frameworks to advance our understanding of the concept. Here, we’ll take a little peek at how the research on Flow experience has played a role in other fields, as well as a particularly interesting perceived ‘gap’ in the literature – Csikszentmihalyi’s notion of the autotelic personality.