The Children’s Response Styles Questionnaire (CRSQ; Abela et al. 2002) is a 25-item scale that assesses the extent to which children respond to sad feelings with rumination, defined as self-focused thought concerning the causes and consequences of depressed mood. The measure is modeled after the Response Styles Questionnaire (Nolen-Hoeksema and Morrow 1991) that was developed for adults. For each item, youth are asked to rate how often they respond in that way when they feel sad on a 4-point Likert scale ranging from almost never (1) to almost always (4). A sample item is: “Think about a recent situation wishing it had gone better.” The reliability and validity of the CRSQ have been demonstrated in samples of early adolescents (Abela et al. 2002). The CRSQ rumination scale demonstrated good reliability in this study (α=0.86).
