The Development and Validation of a Momentary Self-Regulation Scale (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Self-regulation refers to a person’s ability to manage their cognitive, emotional, and behavioral processes to achieve long-term goals. Most prior research has examined self-regulation at the individual-level, but individual-level assessments does not allow examining dynamic patterns of intra-individual variability in self-regulation and and thus cannot aid in understanding potential malleable processes of self-regulation that may occur in response to daily environment. OBJECTIVE The aim of the study was to advance the scope of self-regulation measurements by developing a brief, psychometrically sound momentary self-regulation scale that can be practically administered through participants’ mobile devices at a momentary level. METHODS The research was conducted in two phases. In the first phase, in a sample of 522 adults, we examined 23 previously validated assessments of self-regulation containing 594 items in total to evaluate the underlying structure of self-regulation via exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. We then selected 20 trait-level items to be carried forward to the second phase. In the second phase, we converted each item to a momentary question and piloted the momentary items in a sample of 60 adults over 14 days. Using results from the momentary pilot, we explored the psychometric properties of the items and assessed their underlying structure. We then proposed a set of subscale and total score calculations. RESULTS In the first phase, the selected individual-level items appeared to measure four factors of self-regulation. The factors identified were: perseverance, sensation seeking, emotion regulation, and mindfulness. In the second phase EMA pilot, the selected items demonstrated strong construct validity as well as predictive validity for health risk behaviors. CONCLUSIONS Our findings provide a 12-item momentary self-regulation scale comprising four subscales designed to capture self-regulatory dynamics at a momentary level.