Evidences of validity of the difficulties in emotion regulation scale - DERS

Abstract

Emotional regulation is a recent construct with few adapted instruments in Brazil capable of measuring it. This study aimed to find evidences of content validity, internal consistency and reliability of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) for the Brazilian context. The participants were 402 adults (78.1% women) aged between 18 to 71 years, of which 86.8% resided in Rio Grande do Sul. We revised an adaptation of the referred instrument to facilitate the understanding of the items. In order to test the most appropriate structure to the Brazilian context, we performed a confirmatory factor analysis, comparing the original instrument structure to that validated to Portuguese. The results showed that DERS had good psychometric properties, exhibiting validity and reliability for the Brazilian sample. The factorial structure was equivalent to the original version, containing six dimensions.