Adaptation of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents (ERQ-CA) into Turkish

The aim of this study was the Turkish language adaptation of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents (ERQ-CA) that had been adapted by Gullone and Taffe (2012) from Gross and John's (2003) Emotion Regulation Questionnaire in order to measure the emotion regulation strategies implemented by children and adolescents. The study group consisted of 1048 students (558 girls and 490 boys) between 10 and 18 years old, who were receiving education at the selected middle and high schools in the central districts of Adana province in years 2017 and 2018. Translation works for the language validity of ERQ-CA were performed by four English language teachers. After receiving the opinions of six lecturers of Cukurova University about the translation, Turkish version of the scale was formed and back translation was done. For the purposes of the study, Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was done in order to measure the construct validity of the adapted ERQ-CA. Findings of the CFA revealed that the questionnaire had two dimensions, namely the reappraisal and suppression subscales, which consisted of six and four items respectively. CFA results were similar for different age groups (10-12, 13-15, 16-18) and both genders. Convergent validity of the questionnaire was evaluated for middle school students by use of the Children's Depression Inventory, while the Quick Big Five Personality Test was applied for high school students for the same purpose. As expected, depression levels of middle school students presented a positive correlation with the use of the suppression strategy and a negative correlation with the use of the reappraisal strategy. Similarly, scores of high school students in the personality subscales of agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to experience presented a positive correlation with the suppression strategy, while their scores in the extraversion subscale presented a negative correlation with the suppression strategy. In the evaluation made based on the gender factor, it was found out that girls had significantly higher scores than boys in the reappraisal subscale, while boys had significantly higher scores than girls in the suppression subscale. As a result of the test-retest reliability study performed in a three-week interval, the level of correlation between the first and the second tests was found to be .64 for the reappraisal subscale and .57 for the suppression subscale. On the other hand, the Cronbach alpha internal consistency coefficient was calculated to be .79 for the reappraisal subscale and .53 for the suppression subscale. Findings of the study were discussed based on the opinions and researches in the literature. The Turkish form of the ERQ-CA was determined to be applicable to individuals between 10 and 18 years old. Keywords: Emotion Regulation, Questionnaire Adaptation, Child, Adolescent