Development and adaptation of the Emotion Regulation Skills Questionnaire for adolescents

Introduction: The ability to effectively regulate one's emotions is important for adolescent mental health. However, extant assessments of how adolescents regulate their emotions can be expanded upon in several ways, including incorporating more strategies (e.g., cultural and spiritual) and positive emotions, and being informed by adolescents and expert consultation during the development process. Thus, our study aimed to improve the construct validity of an emotion regulation measure by adapting and refining the Emotion Regulation Skills Questionnaire (ERSQ) into an adolescent self-report.

Methods: We recruited 24 13-17-year-olds (12 males; 11 females; 1 gender fluid) via social media advertisement in the United States in 2020. We used an iterative qualitative approach in which we combined expert consultation, cognitive interviewing with adolescents, and top-down and bottom-up coding to review and provide feedback on the ERSQ.

Results: Findings of thematic analysis showed that a need for clarity in wording and inclusion of strategy examples across all sections of the ERSQ was needed. Adolescents also identified the need to replace the Silly/Excited section with a more age-appropriate positive emotion section.

Conclusion: Findings indicate cognitive interviewing can be successfully completed in a virtual format when necessary, youth utilize a wider range of strategies to maintain or upregulate positive emotions than what is represented in current measures, and use of qualitative methods may have reduced construct underrepresentation and construct-irrelevant variance in the adapted ERSQ.