Tool-Description

The Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC-24) is a psychometric tool widely used to assess emotional regulation and emotional reactivity in children. It consists of 24 items related to children’s behavior, answered by parents or teachers. The tool helps understand a child’s ability to manage emotions and how they react to emotional stimuli.

Data Analysis and Usage

The ERC-24 consists of two main subscales:
Emotion Regulation: Refers to the child’s ability to recognize, manage, and express emotions appropriately.
Lability/Negativity: Assesses emotional irritability and instability, or the tendency of the child to overreact or underreact to emotional stimuli.
The data from the questionnaire are typically analyzed quantitatively, with each statement rated on a Likert scale where parents or teachers evaluate how often the child displays the behavior. After collecting the scores, the total score for each subscale is calculated, as well as an overall score for general emotional regulation.

Purpose

The main goal of ERC-24 is to provide a clear understanding of the child’s ability to handle emotional situations. It is primarily used for:
Detecting emotional problems.
Evaluating the development of emotional regulation during childhood.
Creating individualized intervention strategies to support the child’s emotional development.

Scoring

The ERC-24 is scored based on the parents’ or teachers’ responses about the child. Each statement is rated on a 4- or 5-point scale (depending on the version), from “never” to “very often,” and the data are evaluated to identify areas where the child may struggle. The scale has been developed and validated through research and is used in many studies to measure the effectiveness of various interventions or to assess emotional development in different settings.

References

Shields, A., & Cicchetti, D. (1997). Emotion regulation among school-age children: The development and validation of a new criterion Q-sort scale. Developmental Psychology, 33(6), 906-916.
Shields, A., & Cicchetti, D. (1998). Reactive aggression among maltreated children: The contributions of attention and emotion dysregulation. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 27(4), 381-395.
Zeman, J., Cassano, M., Perry-Parrish, C., & Stegall, S. (2006). Emotion regulation in children and adolescents. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 15(1), 83-98.