Assessing the impact of an emotion regulation booster program for elementary school-aged children.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether children who participated in a booster program 3 years after completing an emotion regulation program show a greater increase between pretest and post-test in the development of emotion regulation skills than children in a comparison group. A booster program was implemented as a pilot project with seven children ages 12-14. The contrast group consisted of eight children ages 10-14. Results of the study showed that the booster group had significant increases on 4 of 10 outcome measures: emotional awareness, emotional expressiveness, number of identified body cues, and number of identified calming activities. The contrast group showed no significant pretest post-test changes on the outcomes measured. EDITORS' STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS: Replication will be required with a larger sample size, but the emotion regulation results presented are encouraging. Program developers and evaluators will benefit from the authors' discussion of the importance and role of booster programs.