Perth Emotion Regulation Competency Inventory (PERCI)
32 items on how you handle negative and positive emotions, across eight dimensions
Do emotions overwhelm you, or can you never seem to make a good mood last? The PERCI looks at how you handle negative and positive emotions across eight dimensions — 32 items, about 8 minutes.
Emotions come up — can you steady them, or do they tend to carry you along?
The Perth Emotion Regulation Competency Inventory (PERCI) breaks emotion regulation into eight dimensions and looks at how you handle unpleasant and pleasant feelings separately. It differs from measures that only ask about suppression: it treats "what you do when you're sad" and "whether you can hang onto being happy" as two different questions.
What it measures
Eight subscales, four items each:
- Negative emotions: controlling experience (unsure what to do with bad feelings), activating behaviour (bad moods stop you getting things done), inhibiting behaviour (bad moods make you act impulsively), tolerating emotions (can't stand them, must eliminate them)
- Positive emotions: controlling experience (can't sustain good feelings), activating behaviour (good moods derail your responsibilities), inhibiting behaviour (impulsive when excited), tolerating emotions (uneasy with feeling good)
Scoring and interpretation
All 32 items use a 7-point agreement scale; higher scores mean more difficulty. The report shows where each dimension falls and suggests specific practices for your weaker areas. A note up front: the PERCI is a self-report tool, not a clinical diagnosis. If emotional difficulties are affecting your daily life, talking to a qualified mental health professional is a good next step.
Reliability
The PERCI was developed by a Perth-based team. The original validation study (Preece et al., 2018) confirmed an eight-factor structure in adult samples, with good-to-excellent internal consistency (α = .84–.94). The measure is freely available for research and clinical use.
Result Interpretation
After completing the 32 questions, you'll receive an immediate, detailed report with:
- Your score — calculated automatically based on your responses
- Score interpretation — what your score means in practical terms
- Dimension breakdown — separate scores for each sub-scale
- Context — how your results compare to general population norms where available
All results are displayed on screen. No account or login needed.