Development and Validation of the Emotion Regulation Ability Test for Chinese Youth

A culture- and age-appropriate instrument for measuring emotion regulation ability is needed for the research and practice of Chinese adolescents' emotion regulation. This study developed and validated a situational judgment test of emotion regulation ability for Chinese youth (STER-CY). Three samples were recruited, and approximately 4380 5th- to 11th-grade students (but no 9th-grade students) participated in the study. Researchers collected emotional situations and responses based on the life of indigenous samples and examined the reliability and validity of the test scores. The results showed that Cronbach's alpha and test-retest correlations provided evidence for the reliability of the test scores. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis supported unidimensionality. Construct validity was further verified by convergent and discriminant validity. Criteria-related validity was confirmed by the correlations between this test and some outcome variables related to emotion regulation. It was also found that girls scored higher on this test than boys did and that emotion regulation ability significantly increased from 5th to 7th grade, but it did not improve from 7th to 11th grade. Considered together, these findings showed that the STER-CY is a psychometrically sound measure of emotion regulation ability and can be used in future research and practice.