Emotion Awareness Questionnaire (EAQ)

Abstract

The Emotion Awareness Questionnaire (EAQ) is a self-report instrument designed to measure various dimensions of emotion awareness, particularly in children and adolescents. Developed by Rieffe and colleagues, the scale moves beyond simple identification of emotions to assess the complexity of emotional competence, including the ability to differentiate feelings, articulate them, recognize bodily signals, and analyze their causes and consequences. The EAQ is crucial for researchers studying emotional regulation and its relationship with psychological distress, such as internalising symptoms.

The revised version, often referred to as the EAQ-R, typically consists of 30 items distributed across six distinct factors, providing a nuanced profile of an individual’s emotional processing abilities. The instrument utilizes a simple Likert-type scale suitable for younger populations.

Keywords

Emotion Awareness, Emotional Competence, Emotional Regulation, Self-Report Scale, Children, Adolescents, Affective Processing, Internalising Symptoms, Psychometrics

Authors

Rieffe, C., Meerum Terwogt, M., Petrides, K.V., Cowan, C., Miers, A.C., Tolland, A. (2007); Carolien Rieffe, Paul Oosterveld, Anne C. Miers, Mark Meerum Terwogt, Verena Ly (2008).

Purpose

The primary purpose of the EAQ is to provide a comprehensive, multidimensional assessment of an individual’s ability to recognize, understand, and manage their own emotional states, as well as their willingness to attend to and share those feelings. It was specifically developed to address the limitations of existing measures that often treat emotional awareness as a unitary construct.

The scale aims to quantify specific deficits or strengths across various facets of emotional processing, which is vital for clinical and developmental psychology research. By measuring constructs like the capacity for differentiating emotions and the tendency toward hiding emotions, the EAQ facilitates a deeper understanding of the mechanisms underlying affective disorders.

Construct

The EAQ measures a multi-faceted construct of emotion awareness, defined by six distinct subscales that capture both cognitive and experiential aspects of emotional processing. These dimensions reflect the complexity required for mature emotional functioning.

The six core dimensions measured are:

• Differentiating Emotions: The ability to clearly distinguish between various affective states (e.g., sadness vs. anger).
• Verbal Sharing of Emotions: The willingness and capacity to communicate one’s feelings to others.
• Not Hiding Emotions: The lack of tendency to suppress or conceal emotional expressions from others.
• Bodily Awareness: The recognition of physical sensations that accompany emotional arousal (e.g., feeling nervous in the stomach).
• Attending to Others’ Emotions: The importance placed on, and capacity for, understanding the emotional states of peers and friends.
• Analyses of Emotions: The cognitive effort expended to understand the causes and implications of one’s feelings.

Validity

The validity of the EAQ has been supported through studies demonstrating its theoretically coherent structure and its predictive power regarding psychological outcomes. The initial 2007 study established the structural validity, primarily through factor analysis, confirming the proposed six-factor model in child populations.

Subsequent research, particularly the 2008 revision (EAQ-R), established strong criterion validity by demonstrating significant associations between specific EAQ subscales and measures of internalising symptoms, such as anxiety and depression. For instance, low scores on factors like Differentiating Emotions and Analyses of Emotions were consistently linked to higher levels of psychological distress, suggesting that poor emotional awareness is a risk factor for internalizing problems.

Reliability

The EAQ demonstrates acceptable to good internal consistency (Reliability) across its subscales, as reported in the foundational psychometric studies. The internal consistency, typically measured using Cronbach’s Alpha (α), varies slightly between studies and population samples, but generally falls within acceptable ranges for research instruments.

The reported internal consistency values (Cronbach’s Alpha) for the six subscales, based on the original source data (likely derived from two different samples or test phases), are summarized as follows:

• Differentiating Emotions: 0.67; 0.74
• Verbal Sharing of Emotions: 0.68; 0.77
• Not Hiding Emotions: 0.68; 0.76
• Bodily Awareness: 0.64; 0.74
• Attending to Others’ Emotions: 0.65; 0.77
• Analyses of Emotions: 0.65; 0.77

Factor Analysis

The structure of the EAQ was developed and confirmed through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, which supported a multi-dimensional model rather than a single, global measure of emotional awareness. The final instrument (EAQ-30) is structured around six factors that represent different dimensions of emotional processing.

The six-factor solution confirms the distinct nature of the cognitive, somatic, and social components of emotional awareness. The item distribution across these factors is crucial for calculating subscale scores:

• Differentiating Emotions: items 1, 7, 13, 19, 24, 29, and 30.
• Verbal Sharing of Emotions: items 2, 8, and 14.
• Not Hiding Emotions: items 3, 9, 15, 20, and 25.
• Bodily Awareness: items 4, 10, 16, 21, and 26.
• Attending to Others’ Emotions: items 5, 11, 17, 22, and 27.
• Analyses of Emotions: items 6, 12, 18, 23, and 28.

Instrument

Test Type: Self-Report Questionnaire

Format: 30 items utilizing a 3-point Likert scale (0=not true, 1=sometimes true, 2=true).

Language Available: Primarily Dutch and English, though translations may exist based on subsequent research use.

Population Group: Children and Adolescents.

Age Group: Typically used for school-aged children (e.g., 8 to 16 years).

Population Details: Developed using samples from general school populations.

Test Methodology: Respondents indicate how true each statement is for them personally. Scoring requires recoding of several items to ensure that a higher score consistently reflects greater emotional awareness or competence. The items requiring recoding are: 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 29, and 30.

The original PDF of the EAQ-30 definition can be downloaded here: http://media.leidenuniv.nl/legacy/EAQ30def1.pdf

Keywords

Psychological Assessment, Emotional Competence, Child Development, Affective Science, Differentiating Emotions, Bodily Awareness, Self-Report

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: N/A (Not provided in source content)

Affiliation Email addresses: [email protected] (Dr. Carolien Rieffe)

Correspondence Address: Leiden University (Implied affiliation based on email)

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The EAQ was first published in 2007, with a key revision (EAQ-R) and subsequent publication in 2008. The instrument is often made available for academic research purposes by contacting the corresponding author, Dr. Carolien Rieffe, or through the related research initiative website (http://www.focusonemotions.nl/index.php/instrument-development). Fees and specific permissions for commercial or clinical use must be determined by contacting the authors directly.

Reference’s

Rieffe, C., Meerum Terwogt, M., Petrides, K.V., Cowan, C., Miers, A.C., & Tolland, A. (2007). Psychometric properties of the Emotion Awareness Questionnaire for children. Personality and Individual Differences, 43, 95–105.

Rieffe, C., Oosterveld, P., Miers, A.C., Meerum Terwogt, M., & Ly, V. (2008). Emotion awareness and internalising symptoms in children and adolescents; the Emotion Awareness Questionnaire revised. Personality and Individual Differences, 45, 756-761.

Items of the Emotion Awareness Questionnaire (EAQ)

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

1. I am often confused or puzzled about what I am feeling
2. I find it difficult to explain to a friend how I feel
3. Other people don’t need to know how I am feeling.
4. When I am scared or nervous‚ I feel something in my tummy
5. It is important to know how my friends are feeling
6. When I am angry or upset‚ I try to understand why
7. It is difficult to know whether I feel sad or angry or something else
8. I find it hard to talk to anyone about how I feel
9. When I am upset about something‚ I often keep it to myself
10. When I feel upset‚ I can also feel it in my body
11. I don´t want to know how my friends are feeling
12. My feelings help me to understand what has happened
13. I never know exactly what kind of feeling I am having
14. I can easily explain to a friend how I feel inside
15. When I am angry or upset‚ I try to hide this
16. I don´t feel anything in my body when I am scared or nervous
17. If a friend is upset‚ I try to understand why
18. When I have a problem‚ it helps me when I know how I feel about it
19. When I am upset‚ I don´t know if I am sad‚ scared or angry
20. When I am upset‚ I try not to show it
21. My body feels different when I am upset about something
22. I don’t care about how my friends are feeling inside
23. It is important to understand how I am feeling
24. Sometimes‚ I feel upset and I have no idea why
25. When I am feeling bad‚ it is no one else’s business
26. When I am sad‚ my body feels weak
27. I usually know how my friends are feeling
28. I always want to know why I feel bad about something
29. I often don’t know why I am angry
30. I don´t know when something will upset me or not