Measuring one component of dispositional self-regulation: attention control in goal pursuit Aleksandra Luszczynska a , Manfred Diehl b , Benicio Guti  errez-Do~ na c , Patrik Kuusinen d , Ralf Schwarzer e, * a Warsaw University, Poland and Freie Universit€ at Berlin, Berlin, Germany b University of Florida, USA c Universidad Estatal a Distancia, Costa Rica d Kiipula Foundation, Finland e Psychologie, Freie Universit€ at Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195 Berlin, Germany Received 21 January 2003; received in revised form 5 August 2003; accepted 29 September 2003 Available online 19 November 2003 Abstract Self-regulation can be considered a dispositional variable that may be responsible for self-regulatory actions in a broad range of situations. Attention control is a key component of self-regulation when individualspursuetheirgoalsinfaceofbarriersandsetbacks.Theseven-itemSelf-RegulationScale(SRS), designedtomeasurethiscomponent,hasbeendevelopedinfivelanguages.Thepsychometricpropertiesof this instrument are examined, including 2297 participants from Costa Rica, Finland, Germany, Poland, and the US. The research question was whether the measure is reliable and valid within and across countries.Thefindingssupportthisassumption,suggestingthatthescaleisinternallyconsistentandstable and that it taps a unidimensional construct. Moreover, the criterion-related validity of the scale was examined by using criteria such as self-efficacy, coping, and negative affect, within and across countries. Ó 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Cross-cultural research; Self-regulation; Psychometric scale adaptation; Self-efficacy 1. Introduction Humanbeingscanbeseenascomplexgoal-directedsystemswhoself-regulatetheiractionswith respect to chosen goals (Carver & Scheier, 1998). Self-regulation theories mainly deal with * Corresponding author. Fax: +49-30-838-55634. E-mail address: health@zedat.fu-berlin.de (R. Schwarzer). 0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2003.09.026 Personality and Individual Differences 37 (2004) 555–566 www.elsevier.com/locate/paid