Ruminative Responses Scale (RRS)

Subscale of the Response Styles Questionnaire (RSQ; Nolen-Hoeksema & Morrow, 1991)

22 items that address how often participants engage in responses to feeling sad or depressed.

Assesses responses that:

are self-focused (“Why do I have problems that other people don't have?”)
have a symptom focus (“Think about your feelings of fatigue and achiness”)
are focused on the causes or consequences of having a depressed mood (“I won’t be able to do my job if I don’t snap out of this”).

Four point Likert scale with anchors of 1 = ‘Never’ to 4 = ‘Always’.

The RRS has been extensively used and has been shown to have good internal consistency (Cronbach’s a = .82), moderate to high test-retest reliability over 1 year (r = 0.47, p < .001) and validity for predicting depression (Just & Alloy, 1997; Kuehner & Weber, 1999; Nolan, Roberts, & Gotlib, 1998; Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 1994; Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000; Spasojevic & Alloy, 2001). Items forming the RRS can be found in the following paper which address concerns regarding overlap of items with measures of depression. Treynor, W., Gonzalez, R., & Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (2003). Rumination reconsidered: A psychometric analysis. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 27, 247-259. Please remember to request permission from Professor Nolen-Hoeksema before using the scale in your research.


References

Just, N., & Alloy, L. B. (1997). The response styles theory of depression: Tests and an extension of the theory. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 106, 221-229.

Kuehner, C., & Weber, I. (1999). Responses to depression in unipolar depressed patients: An investigation of Nolen-Hoeksema's response styles theory. Psychological Medicine, 29, 1323-1333.

Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (2000). The role of rumination in depressive disorders and mixed anxiety/depressive symptoms. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 109, 504-511

Nolen-Hoeksema, S., Parker, L. E., & Larson, J. (1994). Ruminative coping with depressed mood following loss. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 92-104

Nolan, S. A., Roberts, J. E., & Gotlib, H. (1998). Neuroticism and ruminative response style as predictors of change in depressive symptomatology. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 22, 445-455.

Nolen-Hoeksema, S., & Morrow, J. (1991). A prospective study of depression and posttraumatic stress symptoms after a natural disaster: The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 115-121.

Spasojevic, J., & Alloy, L. B. (2001). Rumination as a common mechanism relating depressive risk factors to depression. Emotion, 1, 25-37.

Rumination psychometrics

Armey, M. F., Fresco, D. M., Moore, M. T., Mennin, D. S., Turk, C. L., Heimberg, R. G., Kecmanovic, J., & Alloy, L. B. (2009). Brooding and pondering: Isolating the active ingredients of depressive rumination with exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. Assessment, 16, 315-327.

Abstract

Depressive rumination, as assessed by Nolen-Hoeksema's Response Styles Questionnaire (RSQ), predicts the onset, chronicity, and duration of depressed mood. However, some RSQ items contain depressive content and result in a heterogeneous factor structure. After the a priori elimination of items potentially confounded with depressed item content, Treynor, Gonzalez, and Nolen-Hoeksema identified two factors within the remaining RSQ rumination sub-scale that were differentially related to depression: brooding and pondering. However, Treynor et al. used a nonstandard form and administration of the RSQ. The present study sought to address these methodological idiosyncrasies and replicate the factor structure of Treynor et al. through exploratory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. Findings support the brooding and pondering solution and demonstrate that brooding relates more strongly to depression and anxiety than does pondering.