Bochum Assessment of Avoidance-based Emotion Regulation for Children (BAER-C)

Abstract

The Bochum Assessment of Avoidance-based Emotion Regulation for Children (BAER-C), developed by Lippert et al. (2023), is an original psychological inventory designed to comprehensively assess specific Avoidance Strategies used by children. The scale focuses on measuring avoidance mechanisms—including cognitive avoidance, behavioral avoidance, verbal and social reassurance seeking, and reappraisal—specifically in situations that elicit anticipatory Anxiety.

The development process began with 25 items and an open-ended question to capture unlisted Emotion Regulation strategies. Following item analysis, the final version consists of 21 items organized into a robust 5-factor model, supported by initial Factor Analysis. The BAER-C was administered to both school children (aged 8 to 14 years) and children diagnosed with anxiety disorders (aged 8 to 16 years), along with their parents. While initial reports indicated promising reliability and validity, the authors suggested that further research is needed to thoroughly analyze its Construct Validity in comparison with established emotion regulation questionnaires.

Keywords

Avoidance-Based Emotion Regulation, Behavioral Avoidance, Children, Emotion Regulation, Reappraisal, Social Reassurance, Suppression, Verbal Reassurance, Anxiety, Cognitive Appraisal, Emotional Assessment, State Trait Level Measures, Stress Reactions.

Authors

Michael W. Lippert, Katharina Sommer, Tabea Flasinski, Jan Schomberg, Verena Pflug, Hanna Christiansen, Tina In-Albon, Susanne Knappe, Marcel Romanos, Brunna Tuschen-Caffier, Silvia Schneider.

Purpose

The primary goal of the BAER-C is to provide a detailed, multidimensional assessment of the various avoidance strategies employed by children when confronted with situations that provoke anticipatory anxiety. Unlike scales that focus only on general coping styles, the BAER-C is specifically structured to capture fine-grained distinctions between different forms of avoidance.

The instrument aims to quantify key emotion regulation strategies, including cognitive avoidance (suppression), behavioral avoidance (physical withdrawal), and different forms of external regulation such as seeking verbal reassurance and social reassurance. It also includes a measure of reappraisal, allowing researchers and clinicians to assess avoidance-oriented coping alongside a common adaptive strategy.

Construct

The BAER-C measures the latent construct of avoidance-based emotion regulation in childhood, particularly in response to anticipated anxiety. The scale operationalizes this construct through five empirically derived subscales identified via factor analysis:

• Behavioral Avoidance: Items reflecting physical withdrawal or actions taken to evade the threatening situation.

• Verbal Reassurance: Items measuring the repetitive seeking of verbal confirmation from others that everything will be safe or okay.

• Social Reassurance: Items capturing the need to be accompanied by another person to mitigate fear.

• Suppression: Items related to cognitive avoidance, such as actively trying to push anxiety-provoking thoughts out of one’s head.

• Reappraisal: Items assessing the use of cognitive reframing or positive self-talk to reduce the emotional impact of the situation.

Validity

The scale underwent testing for both convergent and divergent (discriminant) validity. Strong evidence for convergent validity was established, as the overall BAER-C avoidance score showed a significant positive correlation with the total anxiety symptom scale of the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale (SCAS-C; r = .23, p < .001). Furthermore, nearly all avoidance subscales, with the exception of the suppression subscale, correlated significantly with the SCAS-C anxiety symptom scale (all rs > .17, all ps < .05).

Findings regarding discriminant validity were mixed. While behavioral avoidance, social reassurance, and verbal reassurance successfully demonstrated discriminant validity by showing no significant correlations with the externalizing symptoms subscale of the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), the suppression and reappraisal subscales unexpectedly showed significant correlations with externalizing symptoms. This ambiguity led the developers to recommend further comparative research to fully establish the scale’s Construct Validity against other emotion regulation measures.

Reliability

The BAER-C demonstrated high levels of internal consistency across both the total scale and its subscales. The internal consistency of the total instrument, as calculated using McDonald’s ω, was exceptionally high at .94.

For the five individual subscales, the internal consistency ranged from acceptable to strong, falling between .78 and .85. The internal consistency of the overall avoidance scale, calculated using Cronbach’s alpha, was reported as α = .86.

Factor Analysis

The structure of the BAER-C was determined through Exploratory Factor Analysis conducted during the instrument’s development phase. Initially consisting of 25 items, three items—which were deemed situational and displayed low discriminatory power (< .30)—were removed, resulting in the final 21-item version.

A parallel analysis supported the selection of a five-factor structure, which collectively accounted for 54% of the total variance. Model fit indices for this structure were reported as acceptable, including a TLI of .873 and an RMSEA index of 0.072. In the student sample, the model fit remained acceptable, indicated by a favorable chi-square to degrees of freedom ratio (χ²/df = 1.54) and RMSEA of .07 and SRMR of .08, although the CFI (.91) and TLI (.89) were slightly below the conventional threshold of 0.95.

Instrument

Test Type: Original Inventory/Questionnaire

Format: Items are rated by the child on a five-point Likert scale.

Language Available: English

Population Group: Human (Male and Female)

Age Group: Childhood (birth-12 yrs), School Age (6-12 yrs), Adolescence (13-17 yrs), Adulthood (18 yrs & older). (Note: The validation study focused on children aged 8 to 16.)

Population Details: The validation study was conducted in Germany, involving school children aged 8 to 14 years and clinical children with anxiety disorders aged 8 to 16 years, with supplementary data collected from their parents.

Test Methodology: Test Validity, Construct Validity, Convergent Validity, Discriminant Validity, Test Reliability, Internal Consistency, Factor Analysis, Confirmatory Factor Analysis, Exploratory Factor Analysis.

Keywords

Avoidance-Based Emotion Regulation, Behavioral Avoidance, Children, Emotion Regulation, Reappraisal, Social Reassurance, Suppression, Verbal Reassurance, Anxiety, Cognitive Appraisal, Emotional Assessment, State Trait Level Measures, Stress Reactions.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier (Michael W. Lippert): 0000-0002-5223-0137

Affiliation Email addresses (Correspondence): [email protected] (Michael W. Lippert)

Correspondence Address: [email protected]

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The BAER-C was developed and evaluated in 2023. The instrument may be utilized for research and teaching purposes without restriction, as it is classified as non-commercial and requires no usage fee. Further information regarding permissions can be found under the Creative Commons license: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en.

Reference’s

Lippert, M. W., Sommer, K., Flasinski, T., Schomberg, J., Pflug, V., Christiansen, H., In-Albon, T., Knappe, S., Romanos, M., Tuschen-Caffier, B., & Schneider, S. (2023). Bochum Assessment of Avoidance-based Emotion Regulation for Children (BAER-C): Development and evaluation of a new instrument measuring anticipatory avoidance-based emotion regulation in anxiety eliciting situations. PLoS ONE, 18(1), Article e0279658. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279658

Items of the Bochum Assessment of Avoidance-based Emotion Regulation for Children (BAER-C)

The BAER-C is a 21-item measure. The original development involved 25 items, with an additional open-ended question. Through item analysis for difficulty and discriminatory power, three items were removed. The remaining 21 items are categorized into five factors/subscales: Behavioral Avoidance, Verbal Reassurance, Social Reassurance, Suppression (as an Avoidance Scale), and Reappraisal. The items are available and were rated on a five-point Likert scale.

Bochum Assessment of Avoidance-based Emotion Regulation for Children (BAER-C)

When I am anxious…

Behavioural Avoidance

• Item 2: I try to avoid what makes me anxious.

• Item 3: I try to withdraw from the situation.

• Item 9: I try to get out of the way of what makes me afraid.

• Item 13: I try to avoid the situation in the future.

• Item 20: I try not to get in the situation in the future.

• Item 26: I try everything I can so that I do not encounter what makes me afraid.

Verbal Reassurance

• Item 5: I try to ask again and again if everything is going to be okay.

• Item 17: I try to ask someone if everything is okay.

Social Reassurance

• Item 12: I try not to be alone.

• Item 18: I try to have someone with me.

• Item 22: I try to have another person with me.

Suppression

• Item 7: I try to push what makes me afraid out of my head.

• Item 8: I try to forget what makes me afraid.

• Item 28: I try not to think about what makes me afraid.

Reappraisal

• Item 4: I try to think more positive about the situation.

• Item 15: I try to make the best out of the situation.

• Item 16: I try to tell myself that it is not that bad.

• Item 19: I try to tell myself that I can do it.

• Item 21: I try to find something good in the situation.

• Item 23: I try to ignore what makes me afraid.

• Item 27: I try to find explanations for the situation that reduce my fear.

Note: Children answer on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (totally disagree) to 5 (totally agree).