Two new brief versions of the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and its relationships with depression and anxiety

Abstract

The Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ) (Garnefski, et al., 2001) is a 36-item instrument for measuring cognitive strategies of emotional regulation. There is a brief, 18-item version that measures the same nine strategies as the full version (Garnefski and Kraaij, 2006a). The aim of this study was to develop a brief form of the CERQ, taking into account two different proposals: a 27-item and an 18-item instrument, the latter focusing solely on the assessment of the two general factors obtained in the second-order structure of the original CERQ model and identified in previous studies as adaptive strategies and less adaptive strategies. Participants in the study were 872 individuals aged 18-58 (mean 33.86, SD=8.43). The confirmatory factor analyses yield adequate overall indices in both versions, together with satisfactory validity. In the discussion, it is argued that the 27-item version is more appropriate for the specific rating of the nine regulation strategies people employ, and we propose the 18-item version as a suitable instrument in clinical context for an overall rating of an individual’s cognitive emotion regulation profile, furthermore, the criterion validity with depression and anxiety keeps similar to the larger versions.