Psychometric Assessment of the Emotional Reactions Instrument–Korean (ERI-K) to Measure Korean Children’s Emotional Reaction to Hospitalization

The purpose of this study was to test psychometric properties of the Emotional Reactions Instrument–Korean (ERI-K). A convenience sample of 170 hospitalized Korean children was recruited. Each child was asked to describe how she or he felt during hospitalization, through the ERI-K and the Facial Affective Scale. Surprisingly, children reported lower levels of negative emotions and physical discomfort and a moderate level of positive emotion (좋 다 Happy, Good). Internal consistency reliability of.88 for the 14-item scale provides strong support for reliability. Construct validity was supported by item-to-total correla-tions ranging between.42 and.65. Exploratory factor analysis identified two factors that explained 54 % of the variance. Further testing of the ERI-K is recommended to provide additional evidence of psychometric adequacy across Korean populations