The Emotion Regulation Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents (ERQ-CA): Factor Structure and Measurement Invariance in a Chinese Student Samples

The present study aimed to examine the factor structure and measurement invariance of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire for children and adolescents (ERQ-CA) in Chinese youth (N = 484, M-age = 10.43, SDage = .88). Three versions (i.e., ERQ-CA-10, ERQ-CA-9, and ERQ-CA-8) of the ERQ-CA were tested and compared using confirmatory factor analysis, measurement invariance, and correlation analysis. Results showed that the eight-item version of the ERQ-CA (ERQ-CA-8) fit the data best in all conditions. However, measurement invariance across gender and after a one-year retest interval was achieved using all three versions of the measurement. The three ERQ-CA versions exhibited similar patterns of correlates with external measures (i.e., perceived parental marital conflict, r = -.17 to -.20, ps < .001, emotion expression, and callous-unemotional traits, r = -.26 to -.29, p < .001). Furthermore, the ERQ-CA-10 (i.e., the original ERQ-CA) showed better reliability than the other two versions. In conclusion, although further validity studies are needed, our findings suggest that the original ERQ-CA as well as the ERQ-CA-8 both have good psychometric properties and can be used to measure emotion regulation strategies in Chinese youth.