Self-report measures of subjective time: An overview of existing measures and their semantic similarities

Abstract

The proliferation of self-report measures in psychology, often developed without systematic differentiation from existing tools, raises concerns about construct redundancy and the interpretability of research findings. This study reviews self-report scales designed to assess subjective time, combining a scoping literature analysis with embeddings-based automated semantic analysis to map relationships among them. Thirty scales met inclusion criteria, drawn from experimental psychology, personality research, and organizational behavior. Hierarchical clustering revealed two broad groupings: Temporal Experience, which covers how individuals perceive, feel, and conceptualize time, and Time Perspective, which covers orientations toward the past, present, and future temporal frames. This two-cluster solution partially maps onto previous frameworks of subjective time but diverges in ways that reflect a recurring gap between theoretically motivated distinctions and how researchers operationalize constructs in items. Within the Time Perspective cluster, several Future Time Perspective instruments showed high semantic overlap without a principled account of their differences, suggesting a possible case of micro-level redundancy. Discrepancies between construct definitions and scale content were also identified across both clusters, with direct implications for measurement validity. A post hoc validation study found that model similarity scores correlated with human semantic judgments, supporting the method as a viable first-pass mapping tool. Embedding-based analysis can flag redundancy, but domain expertise remains necessary to interpret findings and draw theoretical conclusions.