Validation of parent and teacher versions of emotion regulation checklist in the Iranian setting: Factorial structure and associations with children’s social-behavioral functioning

The Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC) is widely used to evaluate children’s emotional development in terms of Emotion Regulation (ER) and Negativity/Lability (LN). It uses parents and/or teachers as informants. The purpose of this study was to validate the Iranian version of ERC among preschool and primary school-aged children, reported by parents and teachers.

The ERC was translated to Persian through a translation and back-translation procedure. Then, it was filled out by 549 mothers of children, aged 4 to 12 years (289 school-aged children and 260 preschool children), and 119 teachers of 295 preschool students aged 4 to 6 years. These participants were selected through convenience sampling from preschools and primary schools in different regions of Tehran and Karaj in 2019. To data analysis, descriptive statistics, correlation coefficients, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were used in SPSS-25 and AMOS-24.

The results of exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the two-factor model of both parent and teacher versions of the Persian checklist with scales indicating satisfactory internal consistency. Also, the two subscales of ERC were associated, in the expected direction, with indices of behavioral, emotional, and social functioning of children. This finding provided further evidence for the validity of the ERC.

Results of this study provided evidence for the validity of both parent and teacher versions of ERC in the Iranian setting.