Emotion Regulation in Adult Education Students: Diversifying Our Understanding of Emotion Regulation Measurement, Conceptualization, and Application.

Abstract

Educational attainment is associated with good health and well-being in a variety of domains. Some students seeking to further their education are adult learners who present to adult basic education (ABE) centers. One factor that may be important for ABE students' success is emotion regulation-the ability to regulate or modify one's emotional arousal in a goal-consistent manner. Unfortunately, the most widely used measure of emotion regulation (the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale; DERS; Gratz & Roemer, 2004) was normed upon a homogenous sample of college students who were primarily White. Research has been slow to thoroughly examine emotion regulation abilities in diverse populations such as ABE students, who represent diversity in a number of ways (race, ethnicity, age, roles, responsibilities, stressors, employment). This study examined how emotion regulation presented in a diverse sample of ABE students (N = 237). As anticipated, emotion regulation manifested differently in this sample than the sample the DERS was originally normed upon. These findings underscore the need for interventions maximizing emotion regulation skills that are sensitive to culture, context, environment, and individual to effectively promote quality education practices.