Validating a Measure of Emotion Regulation for Children in Middle Childhood

• In Event: Poster Session 14
  In Poster Session: PS 14 Topic - Social, Emotional, Personality

Abstract

Emotion regulation is part of the emotion system and is related to cognitive processes and social behavior in children (Cole, Martin, & Dennis, 2004). The importance of emotion regulation is underscored by evidence that it is related to more secure parental attachment (Cooke, Kochendorfer, Stuart-Parrigon, Koehn, & Kerns, 2019) and lower anxiety (Mathews, Koehn, Abtahi, & Kerns, 2016).
A measure of emotion and coping strategies that can be used with varying age groups has been lacking but would be beneficial as it would facilitate comparing findings across age groups. Zimmermann and Iwanski (2014) addressed this issue by developing a self-report questionnaire to record situation-specific emotions and emotion-specific coping strategies in 11 – 50-year-old Germans. The measure in Zimmermann and Iwanski’s study (2014) was an appropriate length for adolescents and adults but was impractical for use with younger children. Our goal was to validate a version of the measure that has fewer, more culturally relevant items that are appropriate to assess the most common coping strategies used by preadolescent children in the U.S.
To test the adapted version of the Negative Emotion Regulation Inventory (NERI), 105 children 9-14 years old completed the adapted questionnaire, which assesses emotions and coping in situations intended to induce fear, sadness, or anger. We tested if the adapted scenarios were related in expected ways to children’s emotions and coping strategies. Children also completed measures of anxiety (SCARED) and parent-child attachment (Security Scale), both of which have been found to be related to emotion regulation.
One-way repeated measures analyses of variance (ANOVA) examined the emotions (sadness, fear, anger) children reported experiencing across the three types of NERI situations and found the situations did elicit the intended emotions. Regarding the four coping strategies (adaptive regulation, social support-seeking, dysfunctional rumination, expressive suppression), we replicated general findings from the Zimmerman and Iwanski study that coping strategies varied by emotion situation. Children were more likely to seek support and ruminate in fearful situations than anger or sad situations and were less likely to report suppressing emotions in anger provoking situations than sad or fear situations (see Table 1 for means). Independent samples t-tests revealed no gender differences in use of coping strategies. Finally, we conducted Pearson’s correlations to examine associations between symptoms of anxiety, the security of parent-child attachment relationships, and the four emotion regulation strategies (see Table 2). As expected, we found that anxious children were more likely to engage in dysfunctional rumination and expressive suppression. Children more securely attached to their parents were more likely to engage in social support seeking and less likely to engage in rumination and suppression of emotions.
This cross-cultural replication study provided some evidence for the reliability and validity of the adapted NERI in U.S. children 9-14 years of age. The expected associations with anxiety and attachment suggest the measure can capture coping strategies. The NERI could be used in future studies to identify those coping strategies that best promote positive mental health in preadolescent children and could be a focus of intervention.

Group Authors

Logan B. Kochendorfer, Kathryn A. Kerns

Authors

• Heather P. House, Kent State University
  Presenting Author

• Logan Kochendorfer, Kent State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kathryn A Kerns, Kent State University
  Non-Presenting Author