Description

The goal of the present study is the development and the evaluation of a new psychometric instrument focusing on avoidance as an emotion regulation strategy in children and adolescents with anxiety. Avoidance plays a critical role in the development and the maintenance of anxiety disorders. However, valid and reliable psychometric measures for children, which distinguish different avoidance strategies, are scarce. Derived from Gross‘ process model of emotion regulation the BAER-C was developed. This new questionnaire assesses the use of three avoidance strategies (cognitive avoidance, behavioural avoidance and security behaviour), as well as reappraisal in anxious situations via child self-evaluation and parent-evaluation for children aged 8 to 16. So far, the validation studies have shown a interpretable factor structure, satisfactory internal consistency as well as positive convergent and discriminant validity. Children with anxiety disorder show significantly higher avoidance scores than healthy controls. The current study has the goal to further validate the questionnaire using a behavioural avoidance task, in which the participants are asked to explore a scary looking box. When the study is completed, the questionnaire will be published with open access on our homepage.