Executive Skills Questionnaire-Revised (ESQ-R)

What the ESQ-R measures

The ESQ-R measures self-reported difficulties with executive skills: the everyday skills used to plan, manage time, stay organized and regulate emotions and behaviour. It is a revision of the Executive Skills Questionnaire developed by Dawson and Guare. Strait and colleagues (2020) factor-analyzed the student version of that questionnaire and grouped the items into five skill areas:

1. Plan management (11 items): creating and managing plans to complete tasks; draws on planning and prioritizing, sustained attention, flexibility, metacognition and goal-directed persistence.
2. Time management (4 items): estimating and allocating time and working within time limits; draws on task initiation and working memory.
3. Materials organization (3 items): creating and keeping systems to track information and materials.
4. Emotional regulation (3 items): managing emotions to complete tasks and reach goals.
5. Behavioural regulation (4 items): self-control and thinking before acting.

Because it was built from the student version, the ESQ-R has no stress tolerance area. The manual notes that its emotional regulation area may overlap with stress tolerance in adults.

How to administer the ESQ-R

• Format: 25-item self-report questionnaire, completed on paper or online.
• Instructions: respondents think about how they handle non-preferred tasks and rate how often each item is a problem for them.
• Response scale: 0 = never, 1 = sometimes, 2 = often, 3 = very often.
• Who it is for: developed with college students; the developers also describe use with students, coaching clients and therapy clients. Nasir et al. (2021) evaluated it in working adults in Malaysia.
• Repeat use: the manual recommends no more than every 10 to 12 weeks, and suggests keeping an intervention in place for at least 10 weeks before re-testing.

ESQ-R scoring and interpretation

The ESQ-R is scored as a profile, not one total with severity bands:

• Skill-area scores: the average of the items in each of the five skill areas (range 0 to 3) shows which areas are relatively stronger or weaker.
• Total score: summed across all 25 items (possible range 0 to 75) as a general index of executive skill difficulty.
• Direction: higher scores mean greater difficulty.

There are no norms and no validated cutoffs. The developers' manual offers a rule of thumb only: skill-area averages or individual item ratings of 2 to 3 can be treated as a relative weakness, and 0 to 1 as a relative strength. Any item rated 2 or 3 is worth discussing, even when its skill area looks strong overall. Use the profile to choose intervention targets and to compare the same person before and after support.

Psychometric properties

Evidence comes from the developers' college-student study (Strait et al., 2020) and an independent study in 325 Malaysian executive-level employees (Nasir et al., 2021). In the Malaysian study:

• Structure: single-factor, five-factor and second-order five-factor models all fit well; the second-order model (five skill areas under a general executive skills factor) was preferred.
• Internal consistency: excellent for the total score (alpha 0.901, omega 0.907); adequate for each skill area except behavioural regulation.
• Validity: ESQ-R scores correlated negatively with the Executive Function Index (convergent), self-rated creativity (discriminant) and work engagement (concurrent), and explained variance in employee well-being beyond work engagement and creativity (incremental).

A follow-up study in 314 Malaysian working adults found ESQ-R scores were negatively associated with work engagement and well-being (Tan et al., 2022).

Limitations

• No normative data, so scores cannot be compared against a reference population.
• The behavioural regulation skill area has weaker internal consistency, and some of its items loaded poorly.
• Self-report reflects perceived difficulty, which can be shaped by mood, stress and insight; it is not an objective test of executive function.
• Peer-reviewed evidence is limited to a small number of studies; predictive validity has not been tested.
• Not a diagnostic tool for ADHD or cognitive impairment.

Using the ESQ-R in practice

The ESQ-R fits coaching, occupational therapy, psychotherapy, ADHD support and academic support settings. Review the five skill areas and the individual items with the person, name their stronger areas as well as weaker ones, and pick one or two weaker areas as goals. Re-administer after the support has been in place to check for change.