Portuguese validation of the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire short version in youth: Validity, reliability and invariance across gender and age

ABSTRACT

The Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ) is a multidimensional measure widely used to access nine cognitive emotion regulation strategies. In this study, we examined the psychometric properties of the CERQ-Short Portuguese version. A sample of 1052 adolescents (aged 10–25 years old, 60.53% females) completed the CERQ-Short form, the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale, and the Patient Health Questionnaire. Confirmatory factor analyses showed that the nine latent dimensions of CERQ-Short provided an acceptable fit to the data. Measurement invariance (for gender and three age-groups), reliability and construct validity were adequate. The adaptative strategies were positively associated with higher positive affect, and maladaptive strategies with higher negative affect, symptoms of generalized anxiety and depression. These results suggest that CERQ-Short is a valid and reliable measure for Portuguese-speaking samples. Moreover, CERQ-Short’s length makes it a cost-effective tool for both clinicians and researchers.

KEYWORDS:

• Adolescents
• CERQ
• coping
• emotion regulation
• measurement

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the great support from Raquel Lopes e Adriano Mendes for collaborating at data collection; Eunice Freitas, Sara Santos, Joana Alegrete and Guilherme Heneni for helping to digit the questionnaires in paper version. Schools involved: Agrupamento de Escolas de Benavente, Agrupamento de Escolas de Condeixa-a-Nova, Agrupamento de Escolas José Afonso, Agrupamento de Escolas da Sertã, and Agrupamento de Escolas da Ribeira Grande.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Authors’ contributions

Conceptualization and Methodology: A.C. Santos, C. Simões and P. Arriaga; Investigation, data curation and project administration: A.C. Santos; Formal analysis: A.C. Santos, C. Simões and J.R. Daniel; Supervision: C. Simões and P. Arriaga. Writing - original draft preparation: A.C. Santos; Writing – review & editing: C. Simões, P. Arriaga and J.R. Daniel.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Portuguese National Foundation for Science and Technology(Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, FCT) [SFRH/BD/126304/2016] .