Psychometric properties of the Persian version of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire

Abstract Introduction Gross’s Emotion Regulation Questionnaire is one of the most widely-used and valid questionnaires for assessing emotion regulation strategies. The validity and reliability of the Persian version have not been determined and data on its psychometric properties are not available to Iranian mental health researchers. The purpose of this study was to determine the psychometric properties of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire in Iranian students. Methodology In this cross-sectional study, 348 students (170 males and 178 females) were selected from Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Science and Tehran University of Medical Science. The following statistical procedures were conducted: correlation coefficients, factor analysis, Cronbach’s alpha, and independent t tests. Results The results showed that men use suppression more than women (T = -2.62, p = 0.009). Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were 0.76 for the cognitive reappraisal sub-scale and 0.72 for the suppression sub-scale (excluding question 9). Six questions related to the cognitive reappraisal factor explained 30.97% of emotion regulation variance, and 3 questions related to the suppression factor explained 22.59% of emotion regulation variance. Overall, these factors explained 53.5% of emotion regulation variance. There were significant correlations between suppression and difficulties in emotion regulation, trait anxiety, and affective control. Furthermore, there was a significant correlation between cognitive reappraisal and the Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire. Conclusion The results indicate that the Persian version of the ERQ is a reliable and valid instrument that can be helpful for development of further important studies of emotional regulation.


Introduction
Emotion is an individual's overall, intense, and brief response to an unexpected event, accompanied by pleasant or unpleasant emotional states. Emotion has always been of interest to mental health researchers, for various reasons, including evolutionary function, 1 social-communication, 2 decision-making, 3 and the important role it plays in mental health. 4 In recent decades, there have been many advances in the field of emotion regulation, including scientific theories and studies. Hence, we have achieved a better understanding of the pathway of growth, neurology, genetic and environmental effects, and its relation to cognition. 5 One of the most important issues in mental health is emotion regulation. Emotion regulation relates to a process in which individuals experience and express their emotions. According to Gross, the process of emotion regulation is further examined through cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, i.e. emotion regulation strategies that are activated at the beginning of an event or before it, and those that are activated after an event or an emotion. Gross believes that emotion regulation strategies do not represent the person's positive or negative character, but rather are based on specific situations in the person's life. 6 Health professionals believe that problems with emotion regulation play a major role in maintenance and increase of mental disorders and maladaptive behaviors. 7 Emotion regulation strategies play an essential role in mental health and psychiatric disorders such as depression, 8 anxiety, 9 borderline personality disorder 10,11 and anorexia nervosa. 12 Saxcena et al.
found that difficulties in emotion regulation and use of dysfunctional emotion regulation strategies are factors that have a negative impact on mental health. [13][14][15] In general, in most psychiatric disorders, there is at least one symptom that reflects impairment of emotions. 16 Various instruments have been developed to measure the emotions. One of the most widely used instruments is Gross's Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ). The ERQ is based on a theorybased approach and an emotion regulation model and has two sub-scales, cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. Cognitive reappraisal indicates that an individual makes an effort to change how he or she thinks about a situation in order to change its emotional impact and reappraise the initial perception, whereas expressive suppression is defined as a response-focused strategy. 17 All items are answered on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree), with higher scores representing higher usage of that strategy.
Gross & John, reported that the ERQ has a two-factor structure which means "reappraisal and suppression are two independent regulatory strategies that different individuals use to varying degrees." Cronbach's alphas were 0.79 for cognitive reappraisal and 0.73 for expressive suppression. 17  all participants gave their consent to take part in the study, signing the consent form.

Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ)
The FFMQ is used to measure the subjective view of one's mindfulness. The FFMQ evaluates five facets of mindfulness: observing, describing, acting with awareness, non-reactivity (to inner experience), and non-judging (of inner experience). It was developed by Baer et al. 22 The 39 items on the FFMQ are rated on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (always true).

State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI)
The STAI was designed to measure anxiety in the form of state and trait. In this study, only the trait anxiety part was used, which has 20 items and scores ranging from 20 to 80. The Cronbach's alpha for trait anxiety is equal to 0.9. 24 In Gholami Booreng's study, the Cronbach's alpha coefficient was also reported to be 0.9. 25

Affective Control Scale (ACS)
The

Difficulty in Regulation of Emotion Scale (DRES)
The DRES consists of 36 items. 10

Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO)
The KMO index is a sampling coefficient index that indicates the proportion of variance among the variables that might be caused by underlying factors. This index ranges from 0 to 1. When the value approaches 1, the sampling of the data is adequate for performing factor analysis, otherwise (usually if KMO is less than 0.5) the factor analysis probably falls short of validity. 29

Bartlett's test
Another method for determining the suitability of data is Bartlett's test. This test examines the hypothesis that the observed correlation matrix belongs to a group with nonrelated variables. For a factor model to be useful and meaningful, the variables need to be correlated together. Small significance level values (< 0.05) indicate that a factor analysis appears to be appropriate for the data tested. If the significance level is less than 0.05, the factor analysis can coordinate with the data, since the assumption of correlation matrix unity is rejected. 30

Confirmatory factor analysis
Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) is a statistical method used to investigate the factor structure of a set of observed variables. CFA let the researcher test the hypothesis that a relationship between observed variables and their underlying latent constructs exists.
In confirmatory research (also known as hypothesis testing), the researcher has a good specific idea about the relationships between the variables under investigation and the researcher attempts to find whether a theory, which is specified as a hypothesis, is supported by data. 29

Results
Twenty-four participants were excluded due to missing information needed for the final analysis.
Descriptive analysis of the data collected on the participants is shown in Table 1, and the means and standard deviations for the other questionnaires are listed in Table 2.
The independent t test for the ERQ subscales showed that men used suppression more than women, and this    As shown in Table 4

Discussion
The results of the present study are in line with previous studies. The present study shows that men used suppression more than women did. Significant The results of the present study showed that men used suppression more than women, and this difference was statistically significant. Furthermore, women used cognitive reappraisal more than men, but this difference was not statistically significant. This finding is consistent with the findings of Gross et al., 17 Balzarotti et al., 20 Enebrink et al., 19  Eldeleklioğlu & Eroğlu, included members of the general community. 18,20 The results of the present study denoted that the correlations between suppression items and the DRES and STAI were significantly positive, which demonstrates the convergent validity of the suppression sub-scale (Table 4). Moreover, the negative correlations of suppression items with the FFMQ indicated appropriate divergent validity. A significant positive relationship between cognitive reappraisals and the FFMQ indicated adequate convergent validity ( Table 4). The significant The factor analysis in this study showed that 6 out of 10 ERQ items loaded onto cognitive reappraisal and 3 items (items 2, 4, and 6) loaded onto expressive suppression (Table 5) (Table 5). These results are in line with the findings of Enebrink et al., who reported that there was a correlation between the suppression and cognitive reappraisal sub-scales. 19 Enebrink et al.

Conclusion
The results of confirmatory factor analysis showed that the ERQ had good psychometric properties and that its Cronbach's alpha coefficient was adequate.
Convergent and divergent validity were observed between TRAIT, DRES, FFMQ, DERS questionnaires and ERQ sub-scales. Therefore, the Persian version of the ERQ is a reliable and valid instrument that has consistency and should be useful for development of further important studies on emotional regulation.