Evaluación de la regulación emocional: indicadores psicométricos del instrumento RPA en población española [Evaluation of Emotional Regulation: Psychometric Indicators of the RPA Instrument in Spanish Population]

Possitive affect has often been neglected throughout research in clinical psychology, with respect to its parallel dimension: Negative affect. This study analyses the psychometric properties of the Response to Positive Affect scale in order for it to be adapted and validated in Spanish population. The scale measures people reaction to the emotions experienced from positive situations (emotion regulation). According to the authors of the scale, it is compossed by three factors: Dampening, Emotion-focused possitive rumination and Self-focused possitive rumination. An exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were carried out, with 970 participants from general and clinical population, along with analyses about internal consistency, invariance analysis for gender and group (patients/controls) and concurrent validity. The factors obtained were the same as the ones proposed by the creators of the original scale. Furthermore, the values for internal consistency were adecuate, invariance for sex and group (patients/controls), as well as the correlations with the Sensitivity to Punishment and Sensitivity to Reward Questionnaire (sensitivity to punishment and reward). The scale has good psychometric properties. The Response to Positive Affect scale is an instrument that can allow the study and analysis of positive rumination and damping, therefore, the regulation of positive emotional states, complementing other instruments focused on processes as rumination or negative affectivity. It can be particularly useful for the evaluation, follow-up, and planning of the intervention in anxiety, depressive, and bipolar disorders, among others, when analyzing characteristics of emotional regulation.