(PS8-C54) The Development and Validation of a Measure of Emotion Regulation Processes in School-age Children

The ability to regulate one’s emotions and emotional responses is an important developmental task that has implications for a child’s academic, social, and emotional functioning (Gross, 2014). While we know that emotion regulation skills are associated with more positive outcomes for youth, significant limitations exist in the measurement and subsequent understanding of its development in children (Cracco, Durme, & Braet, 2015). Existing measures of emotion regulation developed for children are widely used but only capture a limited number of emotion regulation processes. Additionally, few integrate an empirically supported theoretical model (e.g., the Process Model; Gross, 1998; 2015) of emotion regulation in the structure of the measure. Having a developmentally appropriate measure of emotion regulation that captures a wide range of emotion regulation processes has implications for research on the development of emotion regulation in children and subsequent methods (e.g., interventions, psychotherapeutic treatments) that may help promote its adaptive development in children. 

The proposed study is designed to develop and validate a self-report measure of emotion regulation processes within a sample of third and fourth grade children. The developed measure will integrate the Process Model of emotion regulation (Gross, 1998) and will strive to assess a comprehensive range of emotion regulation processes in a developmentally appropriate manner. Expert researchers in child development and psychopathology will be involved in the refinement of the developed measure's items and structure. Participants in this study will be approximately 400 third- and fourth-grade children recruited from several elementary schools. Participants will complete the developed self-report measure in addition to existing self-report measures of emotion regulation, coping skills, internalizing distress, positive/negative emotions, and peer relations. Collected data will be analyzed to establish psychometric properties of the newly developed measure and additionally assess its internal structure and convergent validity. Further adjustments to the developed measure may be made in order to increase its utility in adequately assessing emotion regulation processes in school-age children.