Factor Structure of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale in Treatment Seeking Adults with Eating Disorders

Line Nordgren,Elin Monell,Hugo Hesser,Johan Bjureberg,Andreas Birgegård

doi:10.1007/s10862-019-09765-8

Abstract

The Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) is extensively used as a measure of emotion (dys-)regulation ability in both clinical and nonclinical populations. This is the first study to examine the factor structure of both the original 36-item and short 16-item version of the DERS in adults with eating disorders and to test measurement invariance across diagnostic subgroups. The factor structure of the scale was examined using confirmatory factor analysis in a psychiatric sample of adults with eating disorders (N = 857). Four primary factor structures were fitted to the data: (1) a unidimensional model, (2) a six-factor correlated-traits model, (3) a higher-order factor solution, and (4) a bifactor model. Measurement invariance was tested for diagnostic subgroups of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa and associations between factors and eating pathology were examined in each diagnostic group. Results indicated that a modified bifactor solution fitted the data adequately for both the 36-item and 16-item version of the DERS. A general factor explained most of the variance (86%) and reliability was high for the general factor of DERS (total) but lower for the subscales. Measurement invariance of the bifactor model was supported across diagnostic subgroups and test of factor means reveled that bulimia nervosa had a higher factor mean than anorexia nervosa on the general factor. The general factor accounted for a significant proportion of variance in eating pathology. Our results support the use of the total scale of both the 36-item and 16-item version among adults with eating disorders.

Highlights

The Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) is extensively used as a measure of emotionregulation ability in both clinical and nonclinical populations
As for the DERS-16, the results from the present study indicated a good fit for a bifactor model, a finding that is in line with the results from Hallion et al (2018) that is the only previous study to investigate the factor structure of the DERS-16 in a psychiatric clinical sample
Analyses of reliability suggest that the DERS-36 and the DERS-16 total scale are reliable, while results from the reliability analyses of the subscales varied

Summary

Introduction

The Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) is extensively used as a measure of emotion (dys-)regulation ability in both clinical and nonclinical populations This is the first study to examine the factor structure of both the original 36-item and short 16-item version of the DERS in adults with eating disorders and to test measurement invariance across diagnostic subgroups. Numerous studies have reported relationships between eating disorders and emotion dysregulation (e.g., Brockmeyer et al 2014; Lavender et al 2015), a consistent conceptualization of emotion regulation seems to be lacking within the field of eating disorders This is evidenced by the use of a wide range of different measures such as the subscale interoceptive awareness from the Eating Disorder Inventory (Garner et al 1983), the Emotional Awareness Questionnaire (Rieffe et al 2007), the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (Bagby et al 1994), the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Gross and John 2003) and the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS; Gratz and Roemer 2004). All items in the final exploratory factor solution had factor loadings of .40 or higher on the corresponding subscale and none of the items in the final version had significant loadings (above .40) on more than one factor (Gratz and Roemer 2004)

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