Investigating the structure of regulatory focus: A bifactor analysis

- A general promotion construct emerged from self-guide and reference-point conceptualizations.
- The self-guide and reference-point factors explained comparably little reliable item variance.
- The reference-point definition did not facilitate appropriate measurement of prevention.

Regulatory focus theory proposes that two strategic orientations, namely promotion and prevention, shape individuals' self-regulation and make key contributions to the psychological mechanisms undergirding the development of depressive disorders, generalized anxiety disorder, and their comorbidity. Although two distinct conceptualizations of regulatory focus coexist in the literature, it is unclear whether promotion and/or prevention are hierarchical constructs comprising both general and narrower factors, with the latter corresponding to the self-guide and, respectively, the reference-point definitions of regulatory focus. This research used information from a large sample of secondary school students (N = 5732) and examined a number of competing models to examine the structure of promotion and prevention. Findings of this investigation suggest that a general promotion construct accounted for most of the variance in the combined set of items mapping both self-guide and reference-point conceptualizations. Results also indicate that the reference-point definition of regulatory focus did not facilitate an appropriate measurement of the prevention construct in this population. These findings make important contributions to advancing extant knowledge and have salient implications at both conceptual and practical levels.