The assessment of successful emotion regulation skills use: Development and validation of an English version of the Emotion Regulation Skills Questionnaire

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 13; no. 10; p. e0205095
• Main Authors: Grant, Michaela, Salsman, Nicholas L., Berking, Matthias
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 03.10.2018; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Analysis; Anxieties; Anxiety; Biology and Life Sciences; Emotion regulation; Emotions; Medicine and Health Sciences; Mental depression; Mental disorders; Mental health; Occupational health; Physical Sciences; Psychotherapy; Regulations; Research and Analysis Methods; Skills; Social Sciences; Germany
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0205095

Emotion regulation has become an important topic in mental health and psychotherapy research. Skills supposingly relevant for adaptive responses towards emotions include the abilities to be consciously aware of emotions, identify and correctly label emotions, understand what has caused and maintains one's present emotions, modify the intensity or duration of one's emotions, accept and tolerate undesired emotions, confront situations likely to cue negative emotions, and provide effective self-support when working to cope with challenging emotions. To economically assess these abilities, a self-report measure has been developed in German and validated in various studies. To facilitate the use of the measure in English speaking countries, we have developed and validated an English version of the Emotion Regulation Skills Questionnaire (ERSQ) in a student sample (n = 263) and a sample of individual clinical sample (n = 35). Findings from this study provide significant evidence for the reliability and validity of the ERSQ. Thus, the measure can be used to assess a broad range of important emotion regulation skills in an economic way.