Measurement of Behavioral Emotion Regulation Strategies in Early Childhood: The Early Emotion Regulation Behavior Questionnaire (EERBQ).

Nicole B Perry,Jessica M Dollar

doi:10.3390/children8090779

Abstract

The Early Emotion Regulation Behavior Questionnaire (EERBQ) assesses children’s emotion regulation (ER) behavioral strategies in both positive and negative emotional contexts. Psychometric properties and factor structure were tested in a sample of caregivers across the United States (N = 362) with children ages 2–6 years-old (56% male; 73% White). Findings suggest that the EERBQ is psychometrically sound and correlates with other well-established measures of children’s socioemotional functioning. Previously, researchers have only been able to assess children’s emotional behavioral regulatory strategies in a laboratory setting. Thus, use of the EERBQ addresses a critical gap in the current literature by providing researchers and practitioners with an instrument to measure young children’s early emotional functioning outside of a laboratory context. This is particularly salient because early difficulty regulating emotions is often a precursor to persistent adverse developmental outcomes. Thus, the ability to easily to collect rich and predictive behavioral regulation data is imperative for early identification and treatment of youths’ emotional and behavioral problems.

Highlights

The development of emotion regulation (ER) is a critical accomplishment in early childhood given its integral role in normative and atypical development [1]
ER processes are dynamic and function on multiple levels, significant methodological challenges often hinder our ability to investigate the development of ER as a process that incorporates all components of biology, behavior, and the environment simultaneously, often leaving scientists to focus on individual components, or the associations between these components as they relate to regulatory functioning
The internal reliability for the Early Emotion Regulation Behavior Questionnaire (EERBQ) scales were acceptable with alphas ranging from 0.75 to 0.95

Summary

Introduction

The development of emotion regulation (ER) is a critical accomplishment in early childhood given its integral role in normative and atypical development [1]. Consistent with many of our colleagues [11,12,13], we define ER as a set of processes that function at biological, behavioral, and social levels. These processes capture dynamic behaviors and complex biological responses that are both automatic and effortful, as well as conscious and unconscious. They serve to modulate, maintain, inhibit, or enhance the intensity and valence of emotional experiences in an effort to accomplish an individual’s goals. ER processes are dynamic and function on multiple levels, significant methodological challenges often hinder our ability to investigate the development of ER as a process that incorporates all components of biology, behavior, and the environment simultaneously, often leaving scientists to focus on individual components, or the associations between these components as they relate to regulatory functioning

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