Understanding and measuring overwhelming emotions in adolescence
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Developing a clinical assessment tool for measuring emotion dysregulation in adolescence
IRAS ID
328941
Contact name
Georgina Donati
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Oxford, Research Governance, Ethics and Assurance
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 5 months, 31 days
Research summary
Adolescence is a key time for learning about complex emotions. For some people, emotions can be overwhelming and hard to regulate – this is often termed ‘emotion dysregulation’. Experiencing overwhelming emotions is a common feature in many different mental health problems such as anxiety and eating disorders. These mental health problems often begin during adolescence. We want to better understand the experience of overwhelming emotions in order to develop treatments that help people manage emotions and potentially prevent mental health problems. In this study, we will interview young people about their experiences of overwhelming emotions. We will use this data to generate a new questionnaire. The questionnaire will be tested in an online survey with 1,000 participants from the general population and young people attending mental health services. We will check the measure accurately assesses the experience (validity), is stable over time (reliability), and provide cut-offs to indicate when a clinical problem might be indicated. Young people with lived experience have been involved in the design of the project and developing the interview schedule, they will also be consulted as part of generating the new items for the questionnaire.
REC name
London - Bloomsbury Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
23/LO/0789
Date of REC Opinion
23 Nov 2023
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion