Measuring chronic regulatory focus in Romania: adaptation of the Regulatory Focus Questionnaire

One of the most influential constructs in recent social psychology is regulatory focus. However, the Romanian literature on this subject is sparse. After back-translating the Regulatory Focus Questionnaire (RFQ), we explored its factor structure and construct validity in two different studies. In Study 1, 401 students completed the RFQ and the BIS/BAS scales. After excluding one item due to its small loadings on both factors, the exploratory factor analysis and also the confirmatory factor analysis showed that a two-factor structure had the best fit. Results also showed that promotion focus and prevention focus were associated with BAS and BIS in the expected direction. In Study 2, using 198 students, besides the Romanian form of the RFQ we also used the two scales from IPIP 50 for extraversion and emotional stability, and PANAS. We replicated through confirmatory factor analysis the two-factor solution and also found that the instrument has acceptable temporal stability. We also discovered that the relationships between the promotion and the prevention scales with all the other four variables were as reported in other previous studies. The Regulatory Focus Questionnaire – Romanian form holds adequate psychometric properties and certainly can be used in future research, especially on student samples