Relevance. Both personality and clinical psychology suppose many empirical examples describing the disengagement from activity and shifting to another one as quite effective: e.g., unfulfilled dreams and regret for them, severe illnesses or disabling conditions, etc. These examples demonstrate the importance of study of refusal from the goal and goal change as special self-regulatory processes that are not reducible to other processes of self-regulation (e.g., planning, modeling, achievement) and can be productive. Such studies require a validated measure.

Objective. The aim of this work was to validate the Russian-language version of the Goal Disengagement and Re-Engagement Scale, proposed in the self-regulation theory by C. Carver and M. Scheier.

Methods. 287 students and 4792 employees of a large production organization filled out the Russian-language version of the Goal Disengagement and Re-Engagement Scale (Wrosch et al., 2003a). The students also filled the Inventory of Styles of Behavior Self-regulation, a modification of the J. Kuhl’s Action Control Scale Test, a Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire.

Results. Both internal consistency and factor structure of the scale were demonstrated in both samples. The external validity of the scale is confirmed by the expected pattern of correlations with action / state orientation, behavior self-regulation and strategies of cognitive regulation of emotions. The results of the hierarchical regression analysis show that goal disengagement and reengagement differ from other aspects of  self-regulation of behavior not only structurally (at the level of their correlations with each other) but also functionally: after statistical control of the other aspects of self-regulation, goal disengagement and reengagement still predict a number of cognitive strategies regulation of emotions.

Conclusions. The psychometric properties of the Russian-language version of the Goal Disengagement and Re-Engagement Scale are sufficient for its application for research purposes. Further studies could focus on the differentiation of the process of goal change and other self-regulatory processes, especially their effect on the productivity, health, well-being.