Preliminary Validation of a Novel Digital Measure of Emotion Regulation (The Three Circles) in Adolescents

Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) presupposes a tripartite model of emotion regulation, with threat, drive, and soothing systems influencing motivation, physiology, affect, and behaviour. Prior work has established the initial validity and reliability of a digital interactive measure of this model called the Digital Three Circles Scale (d3CS) with young adults. This study aimed to examine its psychometric properties with adolescents. In total, 204 adolescents (Male = 74, Female = 152; Non-Binary = 5; Mean age = 13.8, SD = 1.34) completed measures assessing state- and trait-based emotion, psychological distress, difficulties with emotion regulation, and self-compassion. Participants then completed the Digital Three Circles Scale, as both a state and trait measure. Correlations between constructs indicated good construct validity, with scores on the Digital Three Circles Scale correlating as predicted with established self-report scales of emotion. Criterion validity was also demonstrated with high threat dominance and low soothing dominance predicting psychological distress and difficulties in emotion regulation, and the opposite predicting higher self-compassion. These results indicate that the Digital Three Circles Scale is suitable for use with adolescents, providing an easy-to-administer digital and interactive measure to assess emotion systems. The implications from this work suggest the measure might be helpful in instances where there are difficulties with verbal and emotional literacy, alexithymia, and attention.