Developing and validating a scale for assessing EFL learners’ co-regulation strategies for collaborative writing: A multi-layered perspective

As collaborative writing gains prominence in second language education, the need for reliable instruments to assess students’ collaborative processes is critical, especially in understanding their co-regulation during team interactions. While existing scales primarily focus on self-regulation in individual writing, this study develops and validates a Co-regulation Strategies (CRS) scale for collaborative writing activities. Through validation with 471 college students engaged in collaborative English writing tasks, we employed exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses to establish a 21-item scale comprising six distinct dimensions. The scale incorporates core regulatory dimensions of co-planning, co-monitoring, co-evaluation, and effort regulation, and identifies help‑giving as an independent factor separate from help-seeking, revealing the bidirectional nature of peer support in collaborative contexts. Across five theoretically motivated models, four showed acceptable fit. For general reporting, a three-factor higher-order structure (metacognitive, motivational, social) is recommended as a parsimonious default. The six-factor correlated model supports fine-grained diagnosis, a single higher-order factor yields a holistic index, and a cyclical three-phase model informs phase-specific interventions. Together, these models offer analytical flexibility for diagnosis and reporting across domains and phases. The CRS scale addresses a notable gap in assessing co‑regulation during collaborative writing.