The Emotion Awareness Questionnaire<\/a> (EAQ), developed by Carolien Rieffe and colleagues (2007, 2008), is a prominent self-report psychometric instrument designed to evaluate how children and adolescents identify, process, communicate, and regulate their emotional states. Grounded in a functionalist approach to emotion and developmental modifications of the alexithymia<\/a> construct, the revised 30-item version (EAQ-30) conceptualizes emotional awareness not as a monolithic capacity, but as a multidimensional set of cognitive, somatic, and interpersonal competencies. The instrument evaluates six distinct dimensions: Differentiating Emotions<\/em>, Verbal Sharing of Emotions<\/em>, Not Hiding Emotions<\/em>, Bodily Awareness<\/em>, Attending to Others’ Emotions<\/em>, and Analyses of Emotions<\/em>. Administered on a developmentally sensitive three-point Likert scale (0 = not true<\/em>, 1 = sometimes true<\/em>, 2 = true<\/em>), the EAQ provides clinicians and developmental researchers with a granular assessment of affective self-reflection without confounding emotional understanding with general verbal intelligence or broader socio-emotional maladjustment<\/span>.<\/p>\n Extensive psychometric investigations across normative and clinical youth cohorts aged 8 to 16 demonstrate robust validity and acceptable reliability. Confirmatory factor analyses consistently support its six-factor correlated latent structure, yielding acceptable goodness-of-fit indices across diverse cross-cultural adaptations (e.g., Dutch, English, Spanish, Italian, Turkish, and Persian). Subscale internal consistency estimates generally range from Cronbach’s α = .64 to .77, reflecting optimal psychometric performance for brief multidimensional child-report measures. Convergent and criterion validity studies show that deficits in differentiating emotions and high inclinations to hide feelings correlate significantly with internalizing symptoms, such as somatic complaints, depressive affect, and social anxiety. Conversely, the capacity to verbally share feelings and analyze underlying reasons for affective arousal serves as an emotional buffer against psychopathology. This article provides an exhaustive, academic examination of the EAQ, delineating its historical development, theoretical foundations, psychometric architecture, structural validity, scoring protocols, and clinical applications<\/span>.<\/p>\n Emotion Awareness Questionnaire, EAQ, emotional competence, alexithymia, emotion regulation, child psychopathology, internalizing symptoms, psychosomatics, confirmatory factor analysis, psychometrics, affective developmental psychology, socio-emotional functioning.<\/p>\n The Emotion Awareness Questionnaire was developed by a team of developmental and differential psychologists affiliated with Leiden University, University College London, and allied international research institutions:<\/p>\n Inquiries regarding the Emotion Awareness Questionnaire and associated pediatric emotional competence measures can be directed to the Focus on Emotions research consortium (www.focusonemotions.nl<\/a>) or the corresponding developmental laboratories at Leiden University.<\/p>\n The Emotion Awareness Questionnaire was engineered to address a critical methodological and theoretical void in developmental clinical psychometrics: the absence of an empirically validated, self-report instrument capable of indexing emotional awareness in middle childhood and adolescence without conflating affective insight with language fluency, general intelligence, or overt behavioral pathology. Historically, researchers attempting to evaluate children’s emotional deficits relied either on parent- or teacher-report scales, adult alexithymia instruments adapted without age-appropriate normative adjustments (such as the Toronto Alexithymia Scale<\/a>; TAS-20), or open-ended clinical interviews that demanded high linguistic competence.<\/p>\n The EAQ operates on the premise that emotional awareness is a prerequisite for adaptive emotion regulation. Functionalist emotion theorists posit that emotions act as critical internal signaling systems that convey information regarding an organism’s ongoing interactions with its environment, goal progress, and social homeostasis. When a child can successfully identify, interpret, and differentiate emotional states, those emotional experiences serve as action-readiness signals that inform problem-solving and social communication. Conversely, when children exhibit impaired emotional awareness—manifested as confusion regarding internal feeling states, an inability to recognize affective triggers, or a failure to distinguish between emotional arousal and pure visceral distress—emotions lose their functional utility. Instead, affective arousal becomes overwhelming, dysregulated, and somatized, predisposing the youth to internalizing disorders such as major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and functional abdominal pain syndromes.<\/p>\n The core objective of the EAQ is to capture children’s conscious, explicit cognitive self-attributions regarding their emotional functioning. Specifically, the questionnaire quantifies:<\/p>\n In both clinical and research contexts, the EAQ serves as a diagnostic screening tool, an assessment of baseline emotional competence in psychotherapy, and an outcome metric for intervention protocols such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy<\/a> (CBT), social-emotional learning (SEL) curricula, and mentalization-based therapies for pediatric populations.<\/p>\n The psychological construct assessed by the EAQ is emotional awareness<\/em>, defined within developmental psychometrics as the cognitive capacity to identify, differentiate, evaluate, and describe one’s own emotional states and those of others, alongside the understanding of emotional triggers and the functional value of feelings. Rather than treating emotional awareness as a unitary trait, Rieffe et al. (2007, 2008) operationalized it into six distinct yet interrelated psychological dimensions:<\/p>\n This subscale (7 items) assesses a child’s metacognitive ability to recognize and differentiate between specific emotional states, as well as to identify the eliciting events that provoke these emotions. Children scoring low on this dimension experience their affective states as an undifferentiated, nebulous sense of negative affect or global distress. For instance, they may struggle to clarify whether they are experiencing fear, sadness, or irritation (e.g., “It is difficult to know whether I feel sad or angry or something else”<\/em>). In developmental clinical psychology, poor emotional differentiation is recognized as the cognitive bedrock of internalizing distress, as effective regulatory strategies (e.g., cognitive reappraisal or focused problem-solving) require accurate identification of the specific emotional state.<\/p>\n Comprising 3 items, this dimension evaluates the child’s subjective capacity and perceived difficulty in verbally communicating their internal feeling states to others, particularly peers (e.g., “I find it difficult to explain to a friend how I feel”<\/em>). It does not measure the mere frequency of speech, but rather the translation of complex internal experiential states into shared symbolic linguistic codes. Verbal sharing serves an important role in socio-emotional development by fostering interpersonal intimacy, eliciting peer support, and co-regulating distressing affect.<\/p>\n This 5-item scale reflects the child’s deliberate expressive behavior and the conscious suppression of emotional displays (e.g., “When I am upset, I try not to show it”<\/em>). Items are coded such that higher scores represent greater emotional openness and an absence of expressive suppression. Children with low scores on this scale deliberately conceal their emotional reactions due to fear of negative evaluation, anticipation of interpersonal rejection, or the belief that their distress is socially unacceptable. This suppression has been linked to sustained autonomic arousal, interpersonal detachment, and elevated depressive symptom profiles.<\/p>\n The Bodily Awareness subscale (5 items) indexes the child’s conscious perception and attribution of somatic sensations that accompany emotional arousal (e.g., “When I feel upset, I can also feel it in my body”<\/em>; “When I am scared or nervous, I feel something in my tummy”<\/em>). In the EAQ framework, emotional arousal triggers autonomic and viscero-motor changes (e.g., stomach discomfort, muscle tension, tremors). A healthy awareness of these somatic cues provides early biological feedback regarding one’s emotional state. However, an unintegrated or catastrophic perception of bodily changes, devoid of emotional differentiation, can serve as a primary pathway toward psychosomatic complaints and panic-like anxiety.<\/p>\n This 5-item dimension taps into interpersonal empathy, social attunement, and the motivational salience of peers’ affective experiences (e.g., “It is important to know how my friends are feeling”<\/em>; “If a friend is upset, I try to understand why”<\/em>). Emotional awareness does not develop in isolation; it is fundamentally an intersubjective process. Children who attend to others’ emotional signals demonstrate greater social competence, peer acceptance, and reciprocal emotional development, whereas blunted attention to peer affect is often observed in behavioral conduct problems or social communication impairments.<\/p>\n Comprising 5 items, this subscale measures a child’s metacognitive curiosity, reflection, and proactive cognitive efforts to uncover the root causes, meanings, and consequences of their feelings (e.g., “When I am angry or upset, I try to understand why”<\/em>; “My feelings help me to understand what has happened”<\/em>). Children scoring high in emotional analysis actively process their emotional experiences to guide decision-making, view feelings as diagnostic indicators of goal frustration or attainment, and engage in constructive cognitive restructuring.<\/p>\n The theoretical framework of the Emotion Awareness Questionnaire synthesizes three influential paradigms in contemporary psychological science: the functionalist perspective on emotions<\/em>, the developmental model of alexithymia<\/em>, and the cognitive-developmental model of emotional competence<\/em>.<\/p>\n Rooted in the evolutionary and functional models articulated by researchers such as Joseph Campos, Nico Frijda, and Lisa Feldman Barrett, the functionalist approach asserts that emotions are not evolutionary artifacts or internal disruptions, but evolved psychobiological adaptions designed to establish, maintain, or disrupt an individual’s relationship with the environment. Emotions coordinate physiological responses, cognitive appraisals, and action tendencies to achieve behavioral goals. Within this framework, emotional awareness is the critical monitoring mechanism that enables an individual to read these internal action signals. If a child possesses adaptive emotional awareness, feelings of fear signal perceived threat, prompting avoidance or protective behaviors; feelings of sadness signal loss, encouraging social support-seeking and cognitive conservation; and feelings of anger signal goal blockage, prompting assertive action. When this monitoring mechanism fails, children become dysregulated because they cannot decode the functional messages their emotions convey.<\/p>\n The second pillar originates from clinical psychosomatic medicine. Originally coined by Peter Sifneos and John Nemiah in the 1970s, alexithymia<\/a> (“no words for emotions”) described adult psychiatric and psychosomatic patients who exhibited an inability to identify and communicate feelings, an impoverished fantasy life, and an externally oriented cognitive style. While classical alexithymia research focused on neurological deficits or adult personality traits (most notably measured via the TAS-20), Rieffe and colleagues (2007) recognized that applying adult alexithymia models directly to youth fails to capture the normative, fluid progression of emotional acquisition during middle childhood and adolescence.<\/p>\n Richard Lane’s Levels of Emotional Awareness<\/em> (LEAS) cognitive-developmental model posits that emotional awareness progresses through hierarchical structural stages: from physical bodily sensations, to action tendencies, to single global emotions, to blended emotions, and finally to complex, differentiated combinations of emotional states in oneself and others. The EAQ incorporates these developmental insights by disentangling awareness of visceral somatic responses from the cognitive differentiation of feeling states, recognizing that children often perceive bodily arousal long before they possess the cognitive schemas required to label complex affective mixtures.<\/p>\n Finally, the EAQ aligns with Carolyn Saarni’s seminal framework of Emotional Competence<\/em>. Saarni argued that emotional development involves eight core skills, including awareness of one’s own emotions, the ability to discern others’ emotions, the capacity to use emotion vocabulary, the ability to separate internal emotional states from external emotional displays, and the awareness that interpersonal relationships are shaped by emotional communication. The EAQ’s six subscales systematically operationalize these competencies into psychometrically quantifiable, self-reflective statements tailored to the linguistic and cognitive comprehension levels of youth aged 8 to 16 years.<\/p>\n The construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity of the EAQ has been demonstrated across extensive empirical evaluations conducted on general school populations, clinical psychiatric samples, and specialized pediatric cohorts (e.g., deaf and hard-of-hearing youth, children with autism spectrum conditions<\/a>, and pediatric somatic clinics).<\/p>\n The initial validation by Rieffe et al. (2007) examined an exploratory 30-item prototype across 512 British school children aged 8 to 13. While exploratory factor analyses supported the existence of the theoretical domains, certain items exhibited ambiguous cross-loadings. Subsequently, Rieffe, Oosterveld, Miers, Meerum Terwogt, and Ly (2008) conducted a psychometric revision and structural evaluation across a large community sample of 673 Dutch children and adolescents (aged 9 to 16). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) affirmed that a six-factor correlated model fit the empirical data significantly better than alternative unifactorial or hierarchical models, confirming the distinct structural integrity of the six proposed dimensions.<\/p>\n Convergent validity has been established through structural equation modeling and zero-order correlations with established measures of internalizing symptoms, alexithymia, and somatic pathology:<\/p>\n Discriminant validity analyses demonstrate that the EAQ dimensions operate independently of verbal intelligence (IQ) and general cognitive ability. Studies examining cognitive aptitude through standardized intelligence tests (e.g., WISC vocabulary and block design subtests) indicate that scores on the EAQ are not mere artifacts of cognitive performance or reading comprehension (correlations generally nonsignificant, r<\/em> < .10). Furthermore, longitudinal research confirms that EAQ scores predict internalizing symptoms over time, even after controlling for baseline negative affectivity, confirming that emotional awareness possesses unique predictive utility beyond general neuroticism<\/span>.<\/p>\n The reliability of the EAQ has been demonstrated across diverse language translations and independent developmental samples. Psychometric evaluations focus primarily on internal consistency (Cronbach’s α and McDonald’s ω) and temporal stability (test-retest reliability).<\/p>\n In the seminal psychometric revision by Rieffe, Oosterveld, et al. (2008), internal consistency coefficients for the six subscales were reported as follows in a normative cohort of 673 youths (with parallel coefficients observed across younger [9–11 years] and older [12–16 years] cohorts):<\/p>\n Given that these subscales contain between 3 and 7 items each, alpha coefficients ranging between .68 and .77 meet established psychometric benchmarks for short multidimensional child-report rating scales. While the 3-item Verbal Sharing subscale has fewer items, it maintains good internal coherence without excessive item redundancy.<\/p>\n Test-retest reliability evaluations over intervals ranging from 4 to 12 weeks have shown intra-class correlation coefficients (ICCs) and Pearson correlation coefficients ranging from r<\/em> = .62 to .78 across the subscales. Stability is highest for Differentiating Emotions<\/em> and Not Hiding Emotions<\/em>, reflecting trait-like cognitive styles in affective processing, whereas Analyses of Emotions<\/em> and Bodily Awareness<\/em> exhibit slightly greater fluctuation, reflecting normative developmental reflections and contextual shifts in somatic focus<\/span>.<\/p>\n Independent cross-cultural investigations have replicated these reliability indices across international adaptations:<\/p>\n The structural validity of the EAQ has been examined through Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), demonstrating the latent organization of child-reported emotional awareness.<\/p>\n During the initial development of the EAQ (Rieffe et al., 2007), principal axis factoring with oblimin rotation was conducted on an initial 30-item instrument. The factor structure revealed multiple primary factors corresponding to distinct facets of emotional functioning, but identified cross-loadings and modest communalities among several reverse-scored items. This motivated the 2008 structural revision, wherein items were refined to optimize conceptual clarity and reduce linguistic ambiguity for younger respondents.<\/p>\n In the landmark 2008 revision, Rieffe and colleagues conducted rigorous CFA using structural equation modeling software (LISREL \/ AMOS) on data collected from 673 participants. Several alternative structural models were formally tested against one another:<\/p>\n All standardized factor loadings on designated latent variables are statistically significant (p<\/em> < .001), with values typically ranging from λ = .45 to .75. Modest inter-factor correlations confirm the relative conceptual independence of each subscale. Specifically<\/span>:<\/p>\n The Emotion Awareness Questionnaire (EAQ-30) is structured as follows:<\/p>\n To avoid response bias and ensure that higher final scores across all subscales correspond to higher, more adaptive emotional awareness, negatively phrased items must be reverse-scored prior to calculating scale totals. On the 0–2 scoring metric, recoding is executed as: The following 20 items must be reverse-scored<\/strong>:<\/p>\n 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 29, and 30.<\/strong><\/p>\n (Note on Bodily Awareness: In original clinical scoring variations, somatic attribution items may be retained in their non-reversed form when evaluating conversion or psychosomatic risk, but are reverse-coded when scored in alignment with pure affective differentiation).<\/em><\/p>\n Subscale scores are generated by summing the recoded item values within each respective dimension and dividing by the number of items in that subscale, yielding mean dimension scores ranging from 0.00 to 2.00.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n The Emotion Awareness Questionnaire (EAQ-30) was established in its standard revised format in 2008<\/strong> by Carolien Rieffe, Paul Oosterveld, Anne C. Miers, Mark Meerum Terwogt, and Vince Ly, following the initial 2007 scale publication. The instrument is considered an open-access, non-commercial psychological assessment tool<\/strong> for academic, scientific, and non-profit clinical research purposes.<\/p>\n No licensing fee or purchase cost is mandated for non-commercial educational and psychological investigations. The scale developers make the questionnaire and its scoring keys publicly available to support developmental psychometrics and child mental health research through the institutional website of the Focus on Emotions Lab (www.focusonemotions.nl<\/a>) and Leiden University’s institutional repositories. Researchers and clinical practitioners utilizing the EAQ are expected to formally cite the primary validation papers (Rieffe et al., 2007, 2008) in all resultant scientific reports, dissertations, and publications. Any commercial use, inclusion in fee-for-service software platforms, or large-scale clinical commercial distribution requires explicit written permission from Dr. Carolien Rieffe or the Focus on Emotions consortium.<\/p>\n Response Scale:<\/strong> The Emotion Awareness Questionnaire (EAQ-30) is a 30-item self-report instrument assessing emotional awareness across six domains in children and adolescents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[791,19982,306],"tags":[19983,13196,13197,1056,13198,12060,6],"class_list":["post-6371","psych_scale","type-psych_scale","status-publish","hentry","category-child-adolescent-psychology","category-emotional-intelligence-regulation","category-psychological-assessment","tag-alexithymia-in-children","tag-eaq","tag-emotion-awareness-questionnaire","tag-emotion-regulation","tag-emotional-competence","tag-internalizing-symptoms","tag-psychometrics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashadocs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/psych_scale\/6371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashadocs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/psych_scale"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashadocs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/psych_scale"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashadocs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashadocs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ashadocs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/psych_scale\/6371\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ashadocs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashadocs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ashadocs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Keywords<\/h2>\n
Authors<\/h2>\n
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Purpose<\/h2>\n
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Psychological Construct<\/h2>\n
1. Differentiating Emotions<\/h3>\n
2. Verbal Sharing of Emotions<\/h3>\n
3. Not Hiding Emotions<\/h3>\n
4. Bodily Awareness<\/h3>\n
5. Attending to Others’ Emotions<\/h3>\n
6. Analyses of Emotions<\/h3>\n
Theoretical Framework<\/h2>\n
The Functionalist Perspective<\/h3>\n
The Developmental Alexithymia Framework<\/h3>\n
Saarni’s Emotional Competence Paradigm<\/h3>\n
Validity<\/h2>\n
Construct and Factorial Validity<\/h3>\n
Convergent and Criterion Validity<\/h3>\n
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Discriminant Validity<\/h3>\n
Reliability<\/h2>\n
Internal Consistency<\/h3>\n
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Temporal Stability (Test-Retest Reliability)<\/h3>\n
Cross-Cultural Psychometric Consistency<\/h3>\n
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Factor Analysis<\/h2>\n
Exploratory Factor Foundations<\/h3>\n
Confirmatory Factor Structure (Rieffe et al., 2008)<\/h3>\n
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Factor Loadings and Factor Intercorrelations<\/h3>\n
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Instrument \/ Measurement Tool<\/h2>\n
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0 → 2<\/code>, 1 → 1<\/code>, 2 → 0<\/code> (or algebraically: Recoded Score = 2 - Original Score<\/code>).<\/p>\nPermissions & Fee and Test Year<\/h2>\n
References<\/h2>\n
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Items of the Scale<\/h2>\n
\n 0 = not true<\/span>
\n 1 = sometimes true<\/span>
\n 2 = true<\/span><\/p>\n\n