A new self‐report measure of emotion regulation in adolescents: The Regulation of Emotions Questionnaire

Abstract

AbstractEmotion regulation is an emerging field in psychology concerned with the processes involved in recognizing, monitoring, evaluating and modifying emotional reactions. Few measures have been developed specifically to assess individual differences in the use of emotion regulation strategies. This paper reports on a new self‐report instrument designed to assess the frequency with which adolescents use both functional and dysfunctional emotion regulation strategies, which draw on both internal (intrapersonal) and external (interpersonal) resources to regulate emotions. The new measure was used in a cross‐sectional survey of 225 adolescents. Factor analyses supported the structure of the measure, which has four scales: ‘internal‐functional’, ‘internal‐dysfunctional’, ‘external‐functional’ and ‘external‐dysfunctional’ emotion regulation. The new measure demonstrated good psychometric properties. Frequent use of dysfunctional emotion regulation was significantly positively correlated with parent reports of level of emotional and behavioural problems, and also with self‐reported level of psychosomatic health problems. Frequent use of functional emotion regulation was significantly positively correlated with self‐reported quality of life across a number of different dimensions. These results provide evidence for the validity of the measure. The results also highlight that assessment of both functional and dysfunctional emotion regulation is important. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.