The Emotional Processing Scale (EPS) is a 25-item questionnaire designed to identify emotional processing styles and potential deficits. The EPS is for use by clinicians working in mental health, psychological therapy and health psychology, as well as researchers interested in the emotional life of healthy individuals and other populations.

The EPS can be used to:

Identify and quantify healthy and unhealthy styles of emotional processing;
assess the contribution of poor emotional processing to physical, psychosomatic and psychological disorders;
provide a non-diagnostic framework to assess patients for research or therapy;
measure changes in emotions during therapy/counselling;
and assist therapists in incorporating an emotional component into their formulations of psychological therapy.

Watch our short introductory video:

How the EPS works:

The EPS provides the patient with a series of 25 statements. The patient is required to rate the extent to which each of the statements applies to the way they felt or acted during the last week. Typically, the test takes just five to ten minutes to complete. The EPS uses five subscales of five items each to generate a total emotional processing score.

The subscales are:

Suppression;
Signs of unprocessed emotion;
Controllability of emotion;
Avoidance; and
Emotional experience.

The easy-to-use scoring sheet makes generating subscale scores and the total emotional processing score simple. The accompanying profile chart can then be used to plot the scores in comparison to the percentile scores for the healthy adult UK population. The Norms Booklet also provides a range of other comparison populations against which to compare the scores of an individual.

"...an invaluable tool... an essential contribution to the modern and holistic understanding of the mind-body paradigm..." - Dr Birgit Gurr, Consultant Clinical Neuropsychologist, Dorset HealthCare University Foundation Trust

"...a reliable, useful and easy-to-use scale..." - Man Chung, Professor at the College of Sustainable Science and Humanities, Zayed University

Lead EPS author Roger Baker is Professor of Clinical Psychology at Bournemouth University and formerly a Consultant Clinical Psychologist with the Dorset HealthCare University NHS Foundation Trust (now retired). He has worked in a dual role as researcher and clinical psychologist at various UK universities and in NHS Mental Health Trusts, specialising in emotions and the treatment of anxiety disorders. For 15 years he directed the Dorset Research and Development Support Unit, and it was during this time he became interested in the interaction between emotions and medical symptoms. He has since been involved in research and therapy projects in this area. Roger received an Honorary Fellowship from BABCP for his outstanding contribution to therapy services in 2015.

For more information:

The EPS is a BPS-registered test. Read the review from the British Psychological Society here
Find key references and related weblinks here
Watch our 'introduction to the EPS' webinar, presented by Roger Baker and also read our author Q&A here

Qualification level required:
Level 2. Please see our Test User Qualifications page for guidance

Norms

A wide variety of norm groups, including: healthy community (UK), several international groups, youth offenders, chronic pain sufferers, pregnant women at 13 weeks gestation. Also those with various mental health issues, addictions, eating disorders etc.

Duration

5-10 minutes to take the questionnaire. Scoring takes just 5 minutes.

Ref-ID: 5541166 / P-ID: U_EPS