Analysis of Emotion Regulation in Spanish Adolescents: Validation of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire

Abstract

Emotion regulation (ER) is a basic psychological process that has been broadly linked to psychosocial adjustment. Due to its relationship with psychosocial adjustment, a significant number of instruments have been developed to assess emotion regulation in a reliable and valid manner. Among these, the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ; Gross and John, 2003) is one of the most widely used, having shown good psychometric properties with adult samples from different cultures. Studies of validation in children and adolescents are, however, scarce and have only been developed for the Australian and Portuguese populations. The aim of this study was to validate the Spanish version of the ERQ for use in adolescents and determine possible differences according to the gender and age of young people. The sample consisted of 2060 adolescents (52.1% boys). Exploratory and Confirmatory factor analysis (EFA and CFA), multi-group analysis and Two-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) were performed and the percentiles calculated. The results of the AFE and CFA corroborated the existence of two factors related to the emotion regulation strategies of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, showing acceptable internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Both factors also showed good criterion validity with personality traits, self-esteem, and social anxiety. Differences in cognitive reappraisal were found with regard to age, with younger students exhibiting the greatest mastery of this strategy. Gender differences were observed regarding the expressive suppression strategy, with boys being more likely to use this strategy than girls. A gender-age interaction effect was also observed, revealing that the use of the expressive suppression strategy did not vary by age in girls, and was more widely used by boys aged 12–14 years than those aged 15–16 years. However, we found evidence of measurement invariance across sex and age groups. The results suggest that the ERQ is a valid and reliable instrument that can be used to evaluate emotion regulation strategies in adolescents.

Dimensions and Psychometric Properties of the Social and Emotional Competencies Questionnaire (SEC-Q) in youth and adolescents

“…In adolescents, boys had higher scores in self-awareness and motivation. These results are in line with other studies on social and emotional competencies which showed that boys use more emotional suppression then girls (Gómez-Ortiz, Romera, Ortega-Ruiz, Cabello, & Fernández-Berrocal, 2016). Previous studies also found that adult women scored higher than men in emotional intelligence but this difference almost disappeared when age was controlled (Fernández-Berrocal, Cabello, Castillo, & Extremera, 2012).…”

The emotion regulation questionnaire in women with cancer: A psychometric evaluation and an item response theory analysis

“…The lack of variation in ERQ structure across age and type of cancer adds important evidence for the robustness of this measure and its likely utility in studying psychosocial adaptation to cancer. The CR and ES factors in this study were found to be moderately correlated as they have in a number of other studies, eg, previous studies, since Gross and John first provided evidence of the independence of these factors. The moderate overlap among factors suggests that in the context of meeting the challenges of cancer (and in many other contexts), individuals who tend to reappraise stressful situations in attempt to diminish their negative affect also tend to suppress the expression of negative emotions.…”

“…Moreover, the independence of the 2 factors proposed by Gross and John has not been uniformly supported. While some studies have found that an independent, 2‐factor model provided the best fit, eg, the works of Balzarotti et al and Cabello et al, other studies found evidence supporting a correlated factor model, eg, the works of previous studies …”

The Mediating Role of Psychological Adjustment between Peer Victimization and Social Adjustment in Adolescence

“…Some authors explain this relationship in terms of the attributions of the victims, who tend to blame themselves for their personal characteristics (what is known as characterological self-blame), causing them great emotional distress (Janoff-Bulman, 1979). This indicates that self-blame could be a mediating mechanism of the relationship between peer victimization and psychological maladjustment (Juvonen and Graham, 2014), thus making it of interest to develop more complex models that include social cognition variables and emotion regulation that mediate this relationship (Gómez-Ortiz et al, 2016). …”