Speaker
Description
Shortening instruments is a highly required procedure, as short scales may be advantageous over their lengthier counterparts, especially when time and resources are constrained. However, these abbreviated forms may be weaker than their original versions for both content coverage and psychometric robustness. Also, the abridgment of measures often suffers from methodological strictness, and the potential drawbacks of the shortened scales are rarely reported. This study aims to describe the process of scale shortening, emphasizing the potential costs and benefits in the context of a balance between time-resource savings and potential compromises in validity and reliability. We selected the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) for this condensation process, involving a sample of 459 participants. Item reduction was driven by an intent to preserve the construct’s content breadth and scale’s psychometric quality. Our results supported a two-factor structure (Cognitive Reappraisal and Expressive Suppression), χ2(8) = 11.357 ns, CFI = .995, TLI = .990, RMSEA = .030 (.000-.067), SRMR =.031, and three items were selected for each subscale. Both factors showed satisfactory levels of reliability (α and ω > .710). We tested a latent variable model on an independent sample to evaluate the relations between these two emotion strategies and depression, anxiety, and stress: Cognitive Reappraisal reported negative associations, whereas Expressive Suppression showed associations in the opposite direction. The ERQ-S, as a brief version of the original ERQ, offers potential benefits, as it effectively assesses the two emotion regulation strategies, with a reduced number of items, thereby enhancing its utility in research and practice.
