Adaptation and psychometric validation of Hindi version of the Behavioural Emotion Regulation Questionnaire.

BACKGROUND

The Behavioural Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (BERQ; Kraaij and Garnefski, 2019) is a recently developed tool which assesses behavioural strategies for emotion regulation.

AIM: The present study aimed at validating the factor structure and psychometric properties of the Hindi version of the BERQ (BERQ-H) in a sample of Indian population.

METHOD: A community sample of n = 358 individuals completed the Hindi version of the Behavioural Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, Patient Health Questionnaire-9, Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale-7, and the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K-10).

RESULTS

Exploratory factor analysis revealed that the original five factor structure of the BERQ was replicable. Confirmatory factor analysis favoured a modified five factor structure of the BERQ-H. The unidimensional and the second order factor models of the BERQ-H were not supported. The internal consistency reliability of the BERQ-H subscales was acceptable. Withdrawal, Actively approaching and Ignoring subscales showed inverse associations with depression, anxiety and psychological distress. Seeking distraction did not correlate significantly, whereas Seeking social support showed atypical associations with depression and psychological distress.

CONCLUSION

The BERQ-H is a reliable and valid measure of behavioural emotion regulation strategies. It is advisable to mainly interpret subscale scores on the BERQ-H instead of the overall score.