Background and Purpose: Emotion regulation plays a crucial role in children's adaptive behavior. The importance of this concept in managing the interpersonal relationships, coping with problematic situations, and achieving the personal goals indicates the need for a valid tool to measure it. The purpose of this study was to investigate the factorial structure and psychometric properties of the Persian version of the Emotion Regulation Checklist – Parent Form among students aged 6 to 12.
Method: This research was a descriptive developmental study. The study population included all the male and female 6 to 12-year old students in the governmental primary schools of Arak in the academic year 2018-2019. Then a sample of 471 students was selected among this population through cluster sampling, whose parents completed the Emotion Regulation Checklist (Shields & Cicchetti, 1995) and Social Skills Rating System (Gresham & Elliot, 1990). The classical test theory and item-response theory were used to analyze the data.
Results: The results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis in classical test theory and multidimensional models in item-response theory confirmed the validity of Emotion Regulation Checklist in two factors of emotion regulation and emotion lability/negativity. Results from Cronbach's alpha analysis showed the reliability of 0.76 and 0.69 for emotion regulation and emotional lability/negativity, respectively, which is considered appropriate and acceptable. Also, the prognostic function of the checklist  showed that the emotional lability/negativity in trait range of -2 to 3 had the highest prognosis, and the emotion regulation factor in trait range of 2 to -3 had high prognosis and low measurement error (p<0.01).
Conclusion: According to the results of this study and the importance of evaluation of emotion regulation especially in children, it can be concluded that the Persian version of the Emotion Regulation Checklist is a suitable and valid tool for evaluating this concept in the children aged 6 to 12.