Emotion regulation in undergraduate nursing students: A latent profile analysis

Abstract

Background: Current research on emotion regulation of undergraduate nursing students mainly focused on the overall level of emotion regulation and its relationship with other variables, ignoring the individual heterogeneity of emotion regulation of undergraduate nursing students.

Aim: By latent profile analysis (LPA), this study aimed to identify different emotion regulation profiles among undergraduate nursing students and to explore demographic and personal factors associated with different emotion regulation profiles.

Method: This was a cross-sectional study. A total of 578 nursing students were investigated by the demographic questionnaire, the emotion regulation scale, the Connor-Davidson resilience scale-10 item and the core self-evaluations scale. LPA was used to analyze the latent profiles of emotion regulation among undergraduate nursing students. And multiple logistic regression was used to explore the predictors of different profiles.

Result: Three potential profiles were identified: profile 1-- low suppression and moderate reappraisal group, profile 2-- moderate suppression and high reappraisal group, profile 3-- high suppression and high reappraisal group. Resilience, family monthly income and perception of nursing profession were predictors of different profiles.

Conclusion: Most nursing students were classified into profile 2 and their emotion regulation was relatively good. However, students in profile 1 were with moderate cognitive reappraisal and students in profile 3 were with high expressive suppression, and their emotion regulation need to be further improved by increasing their cognitive reappraisal and decreasing their expressive suppression. Strategies tails to improve resilience, increase scholarships and change the perception of nursing profession may be effective ways to improve emotion regulation of undergraduate nursing students in different profiles.

Keywords: Core self-evaluations; Emotion regulation; Latent profile analysis; Nursing student; Resilience.