A Review of Emotion Regulation Assessment in Schools

• In Event: Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Topic - Social, Emotional, Personality

Abstract

Emotion regulation (ER) refers to the use of cognitive and behavioral strategies in the modulation of emotional experiences (Augustine & Hemenover, 2009; Gross, 1999). It is a necessary and valuable set of skills that everyone must master to some degree in order to navigate day-to-day lives and prepare for challenges or opportunities that lie ahead (Thompson, 1994). In light of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, ER has become a rapidly growing area of focus in schools in attempt to support and protect students’ emotional well-being as the public health crisis unfolds (Restubog, Ocampo, & Wang, 2020). ER can affect students’ ability to learn and retain information, begin and complete tasks, interact with peers and adults, and handle demands and expectations. Students therefore benefit from the assessment and identification of patterns of ER that either buffer them from or place them at risk for developing significant academic, socioemotional, and/or behavior problems. Schools provide a key setting for regular monitoring of ER development, early detection of ER difficulties, and timely provision of ER interventions. However, despite the large number of ER measures developed in psychological research for students (Adrian, Zeman, & Veits, 2011), few are systematically used in schools due to limitations in practical feasibility and transformation of raw data into actionable knowledge (Deighton et al., 2013). ER assessment in school, if any, is usually a part of broadband Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) measures that provide a global assessment of students’ social and emotional competencies. Most of these measures do not provide detailed information about students’ ER (Shapiro & Kratochwill, 2000), such as strategy specificity (i.e., students’ use of distinct ER strategies) and emotion specificity (i.e., students’ regulation of discrete emotion states). Given the need for educators and researchers to understand the availability, scope, and quality of current ER measures used in school settings, we have conducted a qualitative review of school-based ER assessments indexed in recent comprehensive compendia of ER and SEL measures. The primary aim of this review is to examine the differential contribution of each school-based ER measure to educators’ understanding of students’ ER development or difficulties. The secondary aim of this review is to advance research on ER assessment in schools by illuminating gaps in the utility, feasibility, and psychometric quality of currently available measures.

Authors

• Zi Jia Ng, Yale University
  Presenting Author

• Cynthia Jean Willner, Yale School of Medicine
  Non-Presenting Author

• Christina Cipriano, Yale School of Medicine
  Non-Presenting Author

• Marc Brackett, Yale University
  Non-Presenting Author