Emotion regulation can be defined as the flexible ability to respond to situational demands with a range of emotion in socially accepted ways, including spontaneous reactions and their voluntary delay when necessary (Cole et al., 1994). Assessing emotion regulation can be crucial in the context of inclusive education to identify students who may benefit from differentiated support. In addition, the ability to use different emotion regulation strategies enables children to respond more flexible to varying demands in educational settings and contributes to student’s well-being (Somerville et al., 2024). A systematic literature review (Daniel et al., 2020) showed that emotion regulation is not only a promotive but also a protective factor for psychological and behavioral outcomes in children and adolescents. Hence, the ability to regulate one’s own emotions can predict internalizing and externalizing symptoms even during the early school years. Further, emotion regulation can have a buffering effect or moderate how risk factors impact children’s social-emotional development.

There are several emotion regulation strategies which can be beneficial for children if they are adaptive and functional or detrimental if they are maladaptive and dysfunctional (Aldao & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2010). Some examples for emotion regulation strategies are reappraisal, problem-solving and cognitive distraction (Kogler et al., 2025). Reappraisal entails reframing a potentially negative and stressful situation in a more positive manner, thereby mitigating emotional distress(Gross, 1998). Problem-solving refers to conscious coping attempts in order to either alter a potentially negative or stressful situation or minimize its impact (Billings & Moos, 1981). Cognitive distraction is characterized by redirecting attentional resources away from emotionally arousing or stress-inducing stimuli, for instance, by deliberate thoughts toward neutral, unrelated or positive matters (Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991).

Instruments for measuring emotion regulation rely either on external assessment or self-report. Self-report measures are particularly valuable as they capture children’s’ subjective experiences that may not be visible to external observers. Most emotion regulation self-report instruments are conceptualized for children aged 9 years and older (e.g., Garnefski et al., 2007; Grob & Smolenski, 2005; Gullone & Taffe, 2012), as cognitive demands of reflection on one’s own emotions may pose challenges for younger children. One existing German instrument is POEM-KJ (Rüth & Lohaus, 2023), which measures functional and dysfunctional emotion regulation strategies. However, it is only recommended to be implemented in primary school students from third grade onward. This highlights again that emotion regulation instruments are predominantly designed for children in the age range 9 years and above, corresponding at the earliest to later primary school grades. Recently, a new instrument in German named GraSEF (Kogler et al., 2025) was developed which extends the assessment of emotion regulation strategies in primary schools to second-grade students aged 7 to 8 years. This development opens up new opportunities to investigate the use of emotion regulation strategies among younger students, thereby enabling researchers and educators to examine these critical skills at earlier developmental stages than previously possible. For this newly developed instrument the psychometric quality criteria like internal consistency and retest reliability should be investigated to answer the question of whether the new instrument fulfils theese requirements as well as the existing one.  

Therefore, we address the following research questions in this presentation:

• Is the newly developed instrument more reliable than the existing instrument when assessing emotion regulation in second-grade students?
• Further, do second-grade students show significant changes in emotion regulation over time, and are developmental trajectories consistent across both instruments, independent of baseline level and group assignment?

This study was conducted within a preregistered multicomponent intervention study on reading and social-emotional learning. Using a controlled longitudinal design with quasi-experimental allocation to intervention (IG) or control group (CG), we assessed emotion regulation via GraSEF and POEM-KJ in second-graders with reading and social-emotional difficulties across four time points. Participants. Pre-test data were collected from 62 students who completed POEM-KJ and 474 students who completed GraSEF. To address research question 1, we compare the psychometric properties of both instruments. For research question 2, we will examine longitudinal trajectories for the subsample of 40 students (IG: n = 21; CG: n = 19), who completed both instruments across all four time points. Pre-test, mid-test, post-test and follow-up took place between autumn 2024 and autumn 2025. Material. The POEM-KJ (Rüth & Lohaus, 2023) is an established self-assessment instrument in German measuring the use of emotion regulation strategies in children and adolescents. The 32-item short version differentiates between functional und dysfunctional emotion regulation strategies. For each item the children rated their answer on a four-points scale according to their agreement with the statement. The GraSEF (Graz Screening to Assess Social-Emotional Skills; Kogler et al., 2025) is a digital screening tool measuring six social-emotional dimensions: internalizing behavior, externalizing behavior, social withdrawal, problem-solving, prosocial behavior and emotion regulation. Items were read aloud to the students through headphones and then answered on a five-point scale using various test formats (e.g., situational judgement test and self-rating scales). While the full GraSEF instrument consists of the above mentioned subscales encompassing 89 items that assess various aspects of social-emotional competencies, the present study focused on the emotion regulation in anxiety subscale with a total of 55 items. This selective approach was adopted due to time constraints within the data collection protocol. Administering only this scale allowed us to maintain feasibility in the school setting while still obtaining comprehensive data on emotion regulation strategies, which constituted the primary focus of the research questions. Analysis. Analyses will be conducted using the statistical software R (R Core Team, 2025) and SPSS (IBM Corp., 2023). The study was preregistered in Open Science Framework (Center for Open Science, n.d.) on 18th December 2025. To address research question 1, we will conduct a confirmatory factor analysis. For research question 2, we will employ linear mixed-effects modeling for repeated measures.

We expect the results from the factor analysis to support a one-factor structure for GraSEF and a two-factor structure for POEM-KJ. Model fit indices (CFI, TLI, RMSEA, SRMR) will be examined to evaluate construct validity. Parsimony (AIC) will be evaluated to determine which model best captures emotion regulation. Internal consistency (McDonald's ω with 95% CIs) and test-retest reliability (ICC) will be compared between instruments, acknowledging that differences may reflect both scale properties and sample characteristics. We hypothesize superior internal consistency for GraSEF compared to POEM-KJ, with expected positive correlations between GraSEF and functional POEM-KJ scales and negative correlations with dysfunctional scales. We will conduct a linear mixed-effects model with time point, emotion regulation scale, and intervention as fixed effects, including their interactions. We expect general improvements in emotion regulation over time, with stronger gains in the IG post-intervention. The time point × scale interaction should reveal greater sensitivity to developmental changes for GraSEF. We further expect that students with higher baseline emotion regulation show steeper improvement trajectories. The findings of this study will provide an indication of how emotion regulation can be reliably measured in German-speaking second-grade students. The results will serve as recommendation for future research on emotion regulation in early school years. From an international perspective on inclusive education, the present study highlights the importance of developing culturally and developmentally appropriate instruments for assessing emotion regulation via self-report as early as possible. This advance will enable the early identification of children with difficulties in emotion regulation and foster the implementation of support strategies across diverse educational contexts.

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