Factorial structure, measurement invariance and reliability of the Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC) in a sample of Portuguese parents

Emotion regulation is important for socioemotional and mental health development, with lifelong implications. The Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC; Shields & Cicchetti, 1997) is a widely used tool to assess emotional regulation and dysregulation in children. Despite wide use and translate into several languages, inconsistent findings have been found in its factorial structure across studies. This study addresses this gap by examining the factorial structure, reliability, and measurement invariance of the ERC in a Portuguese sample. A sample of 789 parents (mostly mothers, 90.9%) with children between 3 to 12 years old (49.3% preschoolers and 50.7% School-age) completed the scale. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) revealed that the original two-factor model (Emotion Regulation and Lability/Negativity) reached an acceptable fit, however three items had to be removed, and two item residuals correlated. Full invariance was achieved regarding boys and girls. While, regarding age, only configural invariance was achieved, meaning that, different loadings should be expected between preschool and school-age children. Considering the final model the Cronbach’s alphas (α) was .66 for Emotion Regulation and .80 for Lability/Negativity. These findings provide some support for the use of the Portuguese parents’ version of the ERC with preschool and school-age children.