Construct Validity of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale: Further Evidence Using Confirmatory Factor Analytic Approach

Abstract

The Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) represents one of the most popular, comprehensive and well-established measure of emotion regulation, being widely used in clinical and nonclinical settings. Despite it widespread use, there is no agreement about the factorial structure and majority of prior research has been focused in replicate the original DERS model, while studies examining competing models are lacking. Thus, further examination is needed in order to ascertain the more appropriate factor structure. The present study sought to examine the latent factor structure of the DERS by testing several alternative models using a confirmatory factor analytic (CFA) strategy.