Abstract
Research to date has paid little attention to positive affect regulation in adolescence. Our aims were to examine psychometric properties of a questionnaire to assess responses to positive affect in adolescents and to study the relationships these responses have with psychological adjustment. A sample of 1,810 adolescents completed the responses to positive affect questionnaire (with three dimensions: emotion-focused and self-focused positive rumination, and dampening) and three self-report measures of psychological adjustment (i.e. life satisfaction, self-esteem and depressive symptoms). The questionnaire had good internal consistency reliability and the same factor structure as previous studies using adult samples. Secondly, a structural equation model showed that emotion-focused and self-focused responses were positively related to life satisfaction and self-esteem, and negatively to depressive symptoms, while dampening presented opposite associations.
