The Italian Version of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale-8 (DERS-8): A Two-Step Assessment of Structural Validity, Psychometric Properties, and Clinical Cut-Off

Background: Emotion regulation difficulties (ERD) serve as a transdiagnostic risk factor for psychopathology, and the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) is a widely-used self-report measure. Brief versions of such tools are essential for integration into longer assessment batteries and for longitudinal monitoring. However, DERS-8 has not yet been validated in the Italian context. Objective: This study aimed to provide the Italian validation of DERS-8 by examining its psychometric properties, factorial structure, and cut-off scores to distinguish between acceptable and at-risk levels of ERD, along with normative data. Methods: In Study 1 (N = 2016), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to test the DERS-8 structural validity. Also, its psychometric properties were tested. In Study 2 (N = 4221), measurement invariance across age and gender was conducted in an independent sample, together with a deep investigation of psychometric properties and clinical cut-off. Results: Study 1 revealed that, initial model fit was poor but improved to good fit indexes after correlating specific residual pairs. Indeed, after correlating residuals between items #2-#4, #1-#7, and #3-#6, IT-DERS-8 provided good fit indexes (RMSEA = 0.042; 90%CI[0.033, 0.052], CFI = 0.997; SRMR = 0.029) as well as good psychometric properties. Study 2 successfully replicated these results and showed that it is invariant between groups male and females and between ≤ 49 and ≥ 50 years old. Lastly, a cut-off of 25 showed adequate accuracy in classifying individuals with ‘non-problematic’ and ‘at risk’ ERD (AUC = 0.864). Discussion: The IT-DERS-8 has solid psychometric properties and, given its normative data and cut-off, represents a valid measure for assessing and identifying individuals with non-problematic (vs. at risk) in Italian adult samples.