Emotion Regulation Strategies During COVID-19 Measure

Abstract

The Emotion Regulation Strategies During COVID-19 Measure (Baldwin et al., 2025) is an ecologically sensitive, psychometrically validated instrument engineered to evaluate the deployment and efficacy of discrete emotion regulation strategies utilized by adults navigating the acute psychological pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic. Developed through an exhaustive synthesis of contemporary affective science literature, the instrument isolates 18 specific behavioral, cognitive, physiological, and interpersonal coping behaviors. Designed primarily for intensive longitudinal assessments—such as daily diary and ecological momentary assessment (EMA) paradigms—the instrument captures real-time dynamic shifts in affective management. It operationalizes strategy use either through a daily binary checklist (presence vs. absence) or through a 5-point retrospective frequency Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (Never) to 5 (Very Often). Psychometric investigations across diverse cohorts—including adult community samples and nationally representative panels in the United States—demonstrate exceptional interrater reliability regarding strategy categorizations (intraclass correlation coefficient $ICC_{2k} = .96$, 95% CI [.93, .98]). Furthermore, multilevel modeling confirms robust criterion and predictive validity, revealing that the strategic utilization of empirically classified adaptive practices systematically attenuates daily anxiety and psychological distress. This article delivers an exhaustive academic analysis of the instrument’s theoretical foundations, structural mechanics, psychometric parameters, and methodological implications for contemporary affective science.

Keywords

Emotion regulation, COVID-19 pandemic, daily diary, coping strategies, affective science, cognitive reappraisal, psychological resilience, anxiety management, regulatory flexibility, psychological assessment.

Authors

The scale was developed and psychometrically validated by a collaborative consortium of researchers in clinical, social, and personality psychology:

• Chayce R. Baldwin, Ph.D. (ORCID: 0000-0003-0685-1706) — Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA. Email: [email protected].
• Kathryn E. Schertz, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA. Email: [email protected].
• Ariana Orvell, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA, USA. Email: [email protected].
• Cory Costello, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
• Sakura Takahashi, B.A. — Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
• Jason S. Moser, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA.
• Ozlem Ayduk, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.
• Ethan Kross, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA. Email: [email protected].

Corresponding Author Address: Chayce R. Baldwin, University of Michigan, Department of Psychology, 530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Emotion Regulation Strategies During COVID-19 Measure is to quantify, monitor, and evaluate the specific self-regulatory maneuvers implemented by individuals to mitigate pandemic-induced anxiety and emotional distress in everyday contexts. Large-scale epidemiological crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic generate unprecedented environmental volatility, protracted uncertainty, pervasive existential threats, and sustained social isolation. Traditional global, trait-based instruments—such as the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ; Gross & John, 2003)—measure habitual regulatory tendencies but lack the temporal granularity required to observe how individuals dynamically mobilize specific strategies in response to fluctuating day-to-day stressors.

To overcome the ecological limitations of static self-report inventories, Baldwin and colleagues (2025) constructed this 18-item inventory to serve dual empirical functions:

• Micro-Longitudinal Tracking: It enables continuous within-person tracking of strategic implementation within daily diary, ambulatory, and ecological momentary assessment (EMA) frameworks. This functionality illuminates how environmental contextual shifts within the pandemic (e.g., lockdown mandates, rising transmission rates) evoke distinct coping responses.
• Regulatory Toolbox Quantification: Rather than viewing regulatory success as the uniform application of a single “gold standard” strategy (e.g., reappraisal), the instrument evaluates an individual’s “toolbox” or repertoire. It measures repertoire breadth, the deployment of healthy versus unhealthy strategies, and the downstream impact on daily anxious arousal.

In clinical and public mental health contexts, the tool assists practitioners and behavioral epidemiologists in identifying both protective behaviors (such as physical activity, mindfulness, temporal distancing, and relational connection) and risk-elevating mechanisms (such as expressive suppression, cognitive avoidance, stress-induced consumption, and co-rumination/venting). Its applied utility extends beyond COVID-19 to other acute macro-stressors, including collective trauma, socio-political upheavals, and localized natural disasters.

Psychological Construct

The construct assessed by this instrument is multidimensional contextualized emotion regulation, conceptualized as the heterogeneous set of cognitive, behavioral, physiological, and interpersonal processes through which individuals modulate the magnitude, duration, and trajectory of negative emotional experiences (specifically health anxiety and situational panic) during a macro-stressor.

Rather than treating emotion regulation as a broad, monolithic construct, the 18 items evaluate distinct behavioral and cognitive strategies grounded in contemporary affective science:

• Physiological & Somatic Coping: Strategies aimed at regulating autonomic nervous system arousal through somatic modulation. This includes physical exertion (Item 1: “I exercised”) and immersion in natural elements (Item 2: “I spent time outside”).
• Cognitive Change & Psychological Distancing: Cognitive reframing operations targeting primary appraisal and meaning-making. This domain encompasses temporal distancing (Item 3: “I thought about how this situation is not going to last forever”), macro-perspective taking (Item 7: “I thought about the big picture”), and classical positive reappraisal (Item 9: “I tried to find a silver lining”).
• Interpersonal Regulation & Social Support: Relational strategies that leverage social resources. These range from general social connection (Item 4: “I interacted with people…”) and physical affection (Item 5: “I sought physical comfort from others…”) to cognitive advice-seeking (Item 11: “I talked to others about the situation to get their perspective…”).
• Reflective & Contemplative Practices: Deliberate introspective techniques that process affective states without experiential avoidance. These include expressive writing (Item 6: “I reflected on how I was feeling in writing”), formal mindfulness (Item 8: “I used mindfulness or meditation”), and adherence to grounding cultural or spiritual routines (Item 10: “I engaged in a religious ritual… or family ritual…”).
• Humor & Defusion: Modulating emotional intensity via cognitive levity and cognitive reframing (Item 12: “I laughed it off or found humor in the situation”).
• Attentional Deployment & Distraction: Diverting cognitive bandwidth away from threat-related cues toward neutral or absorbing pursuits (Item 13: “I distracted myself by thinking about something else…”).
• Unconstrained Emotional Discharge (Venting): Verbalizing affect without cognitive restructuring (Item 14: “I vented to others by talking to them about my feelings…”), a strategy frequently linked to co-rumination.
• Substance-Related & Consummatory Coping: Relying on exogenous chemical or food intake to numb or comfort negative affect. This is separated into non-alcoholic comfort intake (Item 15: “I ate/drank to make myself feel better…”) and chemical blunting via alcohol (Item 16: “I drank alcohol to make myself feel better”).
• Inhibitory Regulatory Strategies: Maladaptive regulatory efforts marked by behavioral suppression (Item 17: “I tried to hide my anxiety…”) or cognitive avoidance/thought suppression (Item 18: “I refused to let myself think about my anxiety”).

Theoretical Framework

The architecture of the Emotion Regulation Strategies During COVID-19 Measure is informed by three central theoretical frameworks in contemporary psychology:

1. The Process Model of Emotion Regulation

Formulated by James J. Gross (1998, 2015), the Process Model organizes emotion regulation chronologically along the timeline of emotion generation: situation selection, situation modification, attentional deployment, cognitive change, and response modulation. The 18 items directly reflect these temporal nodes:

• Attentional Deployment: Exemplified by Item 13 (distraction) and Item 18 (thought suppression).
• Cognitive Change: Exemplified by Item 3 (temporal distancing), Item 7 (broad-perspective taking), and Item 9 (positive reappraisal).
• Response Modulation: Exemplified by Item 1 (exercise), Item 16 (alcohol consumption), and Item 17 (expressive suppression).

2. The Transactional Model of Stress and Coping

Conceptualized by Lazarus and Folkman (1984), this model distinguishes between problem-focused coping (direct efforts to manage or alter the problem causing distress) and emotion-focused coping (regulating the emotional response to the problem). In an uncontrollable, prolonged global pandemic, direct problem-focused coping (e.g., eradicating the pathogen independently) is rarely feasible. Consequently, individuals must rely heavily on emotion-focused coping. The measure captures both functional emotion-focused strategies (e.g., perspective-taking, mindfulness) and dysfunctional or palliative strategies (e.g., chemical coping, expressive suppression).

3. The Regulatory Flexibility & Repertoire Hypothesis

Recent advances in clinical affective science (e.g., Aldao et al., 2010; Bonanno & Burton, 2013) suggest that no individual strategy is inherently adaptive across all contexts. Instead, psychological health stems from regulatory flexibility—the ability to deploy a broad repertoire or “toolbox” of strategies matched to situational demands. Baldwin et al. (2025) constructed the instrument specifically to measure the size, balance, and compositional efficacy of an individual’s regulatory toolkit during everyday life.

Validity

The psychometric validity of the Emotion Regulation Strategies During COVID-19 Measure was established using intensive longitudinal modeling, criterion-related comparisons, and multi-cohort replications (Baldwin et al., 2025).

Construct and Criterion-Related Validity

Construct validity was evaluated by categorizing strategies along an empirical “healthiness” continuum and examining their associations with ecological affect. Independent raters classified each strategy along a dimension from highly maladaptive (unhealthy) to highly adaptive (healthy). Multilevel modeling revealed strong criterion-related validity: the within-person deployment of strategies categorized as healthy (e.g., physical exercise, outdoor engagement, temporal distancing, mindfulness) was systematically associated with significant decrements in same-day COVID-19 anxiety and psychological distress ($p < .001$).

Conversely, within-person reliance on strategies empirically designated as unhealthy (e.g., expressive suppression, thought suppression, alcohol use) predicted elevated same-day anxiety and higher next-day residual distress. Crucially, Baldwin et al. (2025) demonstrated that the negative association between daily anxiety and healthy strategy utilization was stable across demographic subgroups, confirming generalizable functional validity across diverse environments.

Predictive and Ecological Validity

The measure displays high ecological validity because it was specifically optimized for daily diary implementation during the pandemic’s primary waves (Spring 2020 and early Fall 2020). By assessing behaviors at the close of each day, it reduces retrospective recall bias and avoids heuristic distortions common in cross-sectional trait inventories. Multilevel lagged analyses demonstrated that strategy endorsement predicted changes in emotional states over time, satisfying standards for predictive validity.

Reliability

Evaluating reliability for contextualized, micro-longitudinal instruments requires methods tailored to repeated-measures data, as classic cross-sectional metrics (such as single-administration Cronbach’s alpha) can conflate within-person variability with measurement error.

Interrater Reliability of Strategy Classification

A critical psychometric test in Baldwin et al. (2025) involved establishing interrater consensus regarding the adaptive value (healthiness) of the 18 strategies. Expert clinical and affective science raters independently evaluated the strategies using standardized psychometric coding schemes. The analysis yielded an intraclass correlation coefficient ($ICC_{2k}$) of .96 (95% CI [.93, .98]), indicating exceptional interrater reliability and agreement in strategy taxonomy.

Within-Person Reliability

Because the measure treats the 18 strategies as an emergent checklist (a causal-formative indicator of regulatory behaviors rather than a reflective latent factor where all items must covary), traditional internal consistency metrics across all 18 items simultaneously are theoretically contraindicated. An individual may run outside (Item 1) and practice temporal distancing (Item 3) without consuming alcohol (Item 16) or using suppression (Item 17). Thus, reliability was assessed via multilevel modeling across observation days, confirming consistent within-person variance estimates across both regional and nationally representative samples.

Factor Analysis

In classical psychometric theory, instruments measuring diverse behavioral repertoires or checklists often operate under a formative or index model rather than a reflective factor-analytic model. Because individuals strategically select coping tactics based on immediate situational affordances, the 18 items do not necessarily share a single common latent cause.

Formal exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses on the unified 18-item pool reveal that the items do not collapse into a single unidimensional construct—a design intentionality confirming that coping strategies represent an expansive, heterogeneous “toolbox” (Baldwin et al., 2025). Instead, empirical and structural clustering identifies distinct multi-factor profiles:

• Adaptive Behavioral & Physiological Factor: Strong positive loadings from exercise, spending time outdoors, and restorative physical actions.
• Cognitive Reframing & Distancing Factor: Cohesive loadings across temporal distancing, big-picture perspective-taking, and finding a silver lining.
• Social & Interpersonal Connection Factor: Clustered variance across interpersonal interactions, seeking perspective/advice, and physical comfort.
• Maladaptive Suppression & Chemical Avoidance Factor: Significant covariation between expressive suppression, thought suppression, and alcohol use.

These cluster structures support the deployment of the tool either as an 18-item index of total regulatory breadth or as differentiated subscale scores representing distinct regulatory approaches.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The structural, operational, and administration characteristics of the instrument are summarized below:

• Instrument Name: Emotion Regulation Strategies During COVID-19 Measure
• Alternative Title: Everyday Emotion Regulation Strategy Toolbox (Baldwin et al., 2025)
• Instrument Type: Daily Diary Checklist / Retrospective Frequency Inventory
• Administration Modality: Electronic (Web-based survey, smartphone-based Ecological Momentary Assessment, or Computer-Assisted Self-Interviewing)
• Target Population: Adults aged 18 years and older (validated across young adulthood, midlife, and older adult cohorts aged 21–77)
• Total Item Count: 18 items
• Primary Administration Formats:
  • Daily Diary / EMA Format: Binary checklist evaluating daily strategy endorsement ($1 = \text{Yes}$, $0 = \text{No}$).
  • Retrospective Frequency Format: 5-point Likert-type scale ($1 = \text{Never}$, $2 = \text{Rarely}$, $3 = \text{Some\times}$, $4 = \text{Often}$, $5 = \text{Very Often}$).
• Scoring and Quantification Metrics:
  • Repertoire Size / Breadth Index: Sum of all endorsed items within a reporting window (ranging from 0 to 18), quantifying behavioral diversity.
  • Adaptive Composite Score: Sum or mean frequency of empirically validated healthy strategies (Items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12).
  • Maladaptive Composite Score: Sum or mean frequency of avoidance, chemical blunting, and suppressive strategies (Items 14, 15, 16, 17, 18).
  • Strategy-Specific Analysis: Independent single-item evaluation to examine the relative utility of distinct regulatory choices.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Emotion Regulation Strategies During COVID-19 Measure was developed and published by Baldwin et al. in 2025 (advance online publication, *Emotion*). The instrument is non-commercial and placed in the public academic domain for non-profit research and educational purposes. No testing fee is required for academic or clinical research use. Researchers wishing to use, translate, or adapt the scale are encouraged to cite the primary validation paper (Baldwin et al., 2025) and contact the primary author (Chayce R. Baldwin, [email protected]) for study-specific implementation guidance.

References

• Aldao, A., Nolen-Hoeksema, S., & Schweizer, S. (2010). Emotion-regulation strategies across psychopathology: A meta-analytic review. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(2), 217–237. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2009.11.004
• Baldwin, C. R., Schertz, K. E., Orvell, A., Costello, C., Takahashi, S., Moser, J. S., Ayduk, O., & Kross, E. (2025). Managing emotions in everyday life: Why a toolbox of strategies matters. Emotion. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001492
• Bonanno, G. A., & Burton, C. L. (2013). Regulatory flexibility: An individual differences perspective on coping and emotion regulation. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(6), 591–612. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691613504116
• Gross, J. J. (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 271–299. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.2.3.271
• Gross, J. J. (2015). Emotion regulation: Conceptual and empirical foundations. In J. J. Gross (Ed.), Handbook of Emotion Regulation (2nd ed., pp. 3–20). The Guilford Press.
• Gross, J. J., & John, O. P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(2), 348–362. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.2.348
• Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, Appraisal, and Coping. Springer Publishing Company.

Items of the Scale