Construc­tion Of The Emotional Development Questionnaire For Adults (QDE-A)

Abstract

ABSTRACT

The aim of this paper is to present the construction and application of the Questionari de Desarrollo Emocional para Adultos (QDE-A). It refers to the catalan version of the Questionnaire of Emotional Development for Adults (CDE-To). Available instruments for the measurement of the emotional competence are scarce and all of them can be criticized basically in the lack of a clear theoretical framework and of steady empirical foundations (Pérez, Petrides and Furnham, 2005). The QDE-A, is framed along the lines of research on emotional education of the GROP (Group of Research in Psychoeducational Counseling).It is a self-report questionnaire based on the theoretical framework of the emotional education developed by the GROP (Bisquerra, 2000 y 2007), according to which the emotional competence is composed of five dimensions: emotional awareness, emotional regulation, emotional autonomy, social competence, and life skills for well-being. The QDE-A offers a global score and another score for each one of these dimensions. This article explains the process to arrive to the definitive version that in his extensive way consists of a scale of 48 items. The details are based on a sample of 1537 adults. The reliability coefficient, measured by alpha of Cronbach is .92 for the full scale; and the reliability is higher than .70for each of the dimensions. The correlation between each of the dimensions and the total score is significant in all cases with a level of p<0.01. The QDE-A answers to the need of having a rigorous instrument, adapted to the catalan population, that allows to evaluate the level of emotional competence in adults and interventions in emotional education.