Examining the Cross Cultural Validity and Measurement Invariance of the Emotion Beliefs Questionnaire (EBQ) in Iran and the USA

Abstract

People’s beliefs about emotions contribute to their psychological wellbeing, and two important beliefs about emotions concern their controllability and usefulness. Recently, the Emotion Beliefs Questionnaire (EBQ) was developed to assess beliefs about the controllability and usefulness of positive and negative emotions. To date, most psychometric studies of the EBQ have been conducted with Western populations, and no studies have examined the EBQ’s psychometric properties among adolescents. We examined the psychometric properties of the EBQ among Iranian adolescents (n = 557), Iranian adults (n = 347), and American adults (n = 242). Participants also completed Implicit Theories of Emotions Scale (ITES), Perth Emotion Regulation Competency Inventory (PERCI), and Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21) for measuring the concurrent validity of the EBQ. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the intended four-factor model that distinguishes between controllability and usefulness facets of beliefs about emotions across positive and negative emotions within all three samples. Importantly, this four-factor model was found invariant in terms of gender, age, and culture groups. Furthermore, the EBQ demonstrated good internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and concurrent validity. Our findings indicate that the EBQ has strong psychometric properties among both Asian and Western samples and can be utilised with adolescents too.