Interpersonal Regulation Questionnaire (IRQ): Psychometric properties and gender differences in Chinese young adolescents

Psychol Assess. 2021 Apr;33(4):e13-e28. doi: 10.1037/pas0000997. Epub 2021 Mar 18.

Abstract

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 33(4) of Psychological Assessment (see record 2021-42259-001). In the article "Interpersonal Regulation Questionnaire (IRQ): Psychometric Properties and Gender Differences in Chinese Young Adolescents," by Ruyi Ding, Wei He, Jin Liu, Tuo Liu, Dan Zhang, and Shiguang Ni (Psychological Assessment, 2021, Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. e13-e28, https://doi.org/10.1037/ pas0000997), the following funding information was missing from the author note: "This study was funded by the Shenzhen Humanities & Social Sciences Key Research Bases, Tsinghua SIGS Overseas Research Cooperation Foundation (Grant No. HW2020004), National Philosophy and Social Sciences Foundation of China (Grant No. 20AZD085) and the Guangdong Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. 2020A1515010949)." All versions of this article have been corrected.] The Interpersonal Regulation Questionnaire (IRQ) is a scale developed to measure the tendency and efficacy of intrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation across positive and negative affective states. As the psychometric properties of the IRQ across cultures and different ages have not been well established, the current study was conducted to examine the applicability of the translated IRQ in a sample of Chinese young adolescents (initial n = 487; 50.20% are males; M = 14.52 years old, SD = .75). The original four-factor structure of the IRQ (i.e., negative-tendency, negative-efficacy, positive-tendency, and positive-efficacy) and other parsimonious models were examined and compared using confirmatory factor analysis. The results demonstrated that only the correlated-four-factor model had acceptable model fit indices. The internal consistencies of the four sub-scales were all above .70. Strict measurement invariance (i.e., configural, metric, and scalar) was achieved between males and females. In addition, latent mean comparison showed that females reported higher negative-efficacy and positive-tendency than males, while no gender variations were found for the remaining two factors. The validity of the IRQ was further supported by its convergent-discriminant associations with emotional well-being and distress, emotional expressivity, social competence, empathic responding, cognitive reappraisal, and delinquent behavior. Taken together, the IRQ is a reliable and valid measure for Chinese young adolescents' intrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • China
  • Emotional Regulation*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Interpersonal Relations*
  • Male
  • Psychometrics
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Sex Factors
  • Surveys and Questionnaires*