Measuring Decision-Making Regret Among French Populations Translation and Validation of the Regret Scale

Most studies examining decision-making processes are conducted in English. As a result, the majority of scales that are used to measure relevant constructs are unavailable in other languages. The Regret Scale (Schwartz, Ward, Monterosso, Lyubomirsky, White, & Lehman, 2002) consists of five items that assess an individual's tendency to experience regret. The purpose of this study was to translate and validate this scale into French. Psychometric properties of the newly created Echelle de Regret were verified with a sample of native French-speaking participants. The properties of the translated scale were then compared to those of the original scale derived from a sample of native English-speaking participants. Results of measurement invariance analyses indicate that the measure functions similarly across both linguistic groups. Thus, the Echelle de Regret can be used with confidence to assess regret proneness in French-speaking populations.