Introduction: Affective strategies for coping with affective states linked to the learning process may be oriented toward controlling emotions or toward controlling motivation. Both types affect performance, directly and indirectly. The objective of this research was to design an instrument for measuring the affective strategies used by university students. This measurement model is consistent with the concept of affective strategies and the theoretical model presented in this study. Method: A total of 487 students from different degree programs answered the EEAA (Scale of Affective Strategies in the Learning Process) and a learning competence scale. Several strategies were used for instrument validation, such as expert judgment, confirmatory factorial analysis and reliability and correlation analysis. Results: A 37-item instrument for the measurement of affective strategies was validated. The measurement was based on a theoretical model consisting of 5 factors: Effort Avoidance, Social Image, Intrinsic Motivation, External Anxiety Control and Internal Anxiety Control. All these factors are correlated except the Effort Avoidance factor which has no correlation with Internal Anxiety Control and only a slight correlation with Intrinsic Motivation. Further work on the model and the instrument is required in order to improve the statistical fit. The correlations between the EEAA and the learning competence scale (scales and dimensions) support the instrument's criterion validity. The results confirm that Intrinsic Motivation and Anxiety Control have a positive, moderate correlation with Self-managed Learning, while Effort Avoidance is not related to any dimension of Learning Competence. Conclusion: Adaptive affective strategies should be encouraged, and negative strategies should be replaced as far as possible with other more effective alternatives for learning.