Assessing regulatory emotional self-efficacy within overseas Chinese university students

Research into emotion regulation has attracted increasing attention in recent years. Besides, there has been a growing number of Chinese students pursuing undergraduate and postgraduate studies abroad. However, instruments and evidence of their emotion regulation ability and psychological well-beings are somewhat limited. The aim of this study is to develop a reliable and valid regulatory emotional self-efficacy (RESE) scale that can be used to assess their current RESE status, and to explore the relationship between RESE, coping self-efficacy (CSE) and depression. The results found: (1) the RESE scale for overseas Chinese university students follows a first-order five-factor model. These five factors are perceived self-efficacy in managing fear (FEA), anxiety (ANX), positive affect (POS), distress/despondency (DES) and anger/irritation (ANG); (2) the CSE score for university students is higher in males than in females; (3) the depression score for university students is low, indicating that their current levels of depression are low; (4) RESE has a predictive effect on CSE and depression, and CSE also has a predictive effect on depression; (5) CSE fully mediates the relation between RESE and depression. The current study offers insight into distinguishing emotions of overseas Chinese university students in relation to RESE and clarifying the mechanism of how CSE affects the depression.