Assessing the Impact of an Emotion Regulation Booster Program for Elementary School-aged Children

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine whether children who participated in a booster program 3 years after completing an emotion regulation program show a greater increase between pretest and post-test in the development of emotion regulation skills than children in a comparison group. A booster program was implemented as a pilot project with seven children ages 12-14. The contrast group consisted of eight children ages 10-14. Results of the study showed that the booster group had significant increases on 4 of 10 outcome measures: emotional awareness, emotional expressiveness, number of identified body cues, and number of identified calming activities. The contrast group showed no significant pretest post-test changes on the outcomes measured. EDITORS' STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS: Replication will be required with a larger sample size, but the emotion regulation results presented are encouraging. Program developers and evaluators will benefit from the authors' discussion of the importance and role of booster programs.

The Bifactor Structure of the Emotion Expression Scale for Children in a Sample of School-Aged Portuguese Children

“…The EESC has allowed the development of studies aimed at understanding the transdiagnostic mechanisms that underlie the socioemotional difficulties of children and, consequently, the development of effective interventions to treat children’s psychopathology and promote children’s mental health. Indeed, the EESC has been widely used in several cross-sectional and longitudinal studies (e.g., Kranzler et al, 2016 ; McLaughlin et al, 2011 ; Scott et al, 2018 ) with clinical (e.g., Queen & Ehrenreich-May, 2014 ; Trosper & Ehrenreich May, 2011 ) and nonclinical samples (e.g., Brockenberry, 2016 ; Long et al., 2013 ), and it has been used in studies assessing the efficacy of intervention programs (e.g., Allen et al, 2012 ; Hammond et al, 2009 ). This corroborates the EESC’s qualities and demonstrates its usefulness and contribution to scientific research on emotion expression.…”

“…This lack of consensus is reflected in an inconsistent use of the total score or the two subscales of the instrument. Indeed, some studies used the scores of the two subscales independently (e.g., Allen et al, 2012 ; Brockenberry, 2016 ; Christian, 2012 ; Hammond et al., 2009 ; Queen & Ehrenreich-May, 2014 ), others used only one specific subscale (e.g., Scott et al, 2018 ), others used only the total score ( Desrosiers et al., 2015 ; Long et al, 2013 ; Trosper & Ehrenreich May, 2011 ), and others used both the total score and the subscales ( Choi & Lee, 2015 ). Thus, more research is clearly needed to clarify the factorial structure and dimensionality of the EESC and ascertain whether its two subscales or the total score should be used.…”