engleski

Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire- Dysregulation Profile (SDQ-DP) in Croatian sample and its links with emotion regulation strategies and executive functioning

Emotional, behavioural, and cognitive problems often appear together in different children’s and adolescents’ psychopathological problems. Dysregulation profile which includes dysregulation of affect, behaviour and cognition can easily describe such occurrences. A measure of dysregulation based on the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) has been recently developed and modelled (Deutz et al., 2018 ; Holtmann et al., 2011 ; Winsper & Wolke, 2014), and it was shown that it correlates positively with both internalized and externalized symptoms. One goal of this study was to explore different models of dysregulation profile measured with three SDQ subscales (Deutz, et al., 2018) in the samples of children and teachers. Moreover, links between dysregulation profile and emotion regulation strategies and executive functioning (EF) were also explored. Transdiagnostic models of psychopathology posit that emotion regulation difficulties are present in different psychopathological conditions. Therefore, it was expected that cognitive reappraisal will be negatively correlated with the dysregulation profile, while expressive suppression will be positively correlated with the dysregulation. Problems with executive functioning (EF) are also implied in different psychopathological entities, therefore positive links are expected between EF problems and dysregulation profile. The study was conducted in Croatia as part of the CHILD-WELL project (Child Well-being in the Context of Family) financed by the Croatian Science Foundation. Overall, 1548 children (aged between 8 and 13 years) took part in the project. In this study, 1478 child self-reports, and 1500 teacher reports were available for analyses of different dysregulation models. Furthermore, 1188 caregiver reports about child executive functioning were used in additional analyses. Children and teachers filled out the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 1997), while only caregivers filled out the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (Gioia et al., 2015). Children also reported on their usage of two emotion regulation strategies via the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ-CA, Gullone & Taffe, 2012). One-factor, second-order, bifactor and alternative 5-item models were tested to explore the structure of the dysregulation. In both child and teacher data, the bifactor model and second-order model fit the data well. But bifactor model had a better fit than the second-order model, and one-factor model. However, analyses of reliabilities in bifactor models suggested stronger general factor with lower reliabilities for specific factors. Teacher and child reported dysregulation profile correlated moderately in all models. Executive functioning problems, cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression correlated with dysregulation in expected ways in second-order and 5-item models in child data, and partially in teacher data. In bifactor models, a more complex pattern of results was observed with differences in correlations with general and specific factors. These results show support for modelling dysregulation profile based on SDQ in Croatian samples. Theoretically expected links between dysregulation and other relevant constructs such as emotion regulation and executive functioning were detected. However, this study suggests possible issues in practical usage of bifactor models of dysregulation.

Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire-Dysregulation Profile ; emotion regulation ; executive function ; early adolescence

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