Factor Structure and Incremental Validity of the Original and Modified Versions of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale

AbstractThe Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS; Gratz & Roemer, 2004) is a self-report measure that assesses six facets of emotion dysregulation. A modified version of the DERS (M–DERS) was developed to address psychometric limitations of the original measure (Bardeen, Fergus, Hannan, & Orcutt, 2016). Although the factor structure of the M–DERS (i.e., two models: correlated trait and second-order models) has been supported via confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), the tenability of a bifactor model of the M–DERS has yet to be examined. Preliminary research suggests that a bifactor model of the M–DERS is tenable. In this study (Ns of 993 and 578), results from a series of CFAs indicated adequate fit of the M–DERS and poor fit of the original DERS across several tested models (e.g., correlated trait, second-order, bifactor). Although a considerable amount of variance was accounted for by the general factor, statistical indexes from the bifactor model supported a multidimensional conceptualization ...