Web-Based Assessment of Children’s Social-Emotional Comprehension

Abstract

This article presents results from two studies that included ethnically and socioeconomically diverse samples totaling 4,462 children in kindergarten through third grade. Each study examined the psychometric properties of a web-based, self-administered battery of assessments of social-emotional comprehension called “SELweb.” Assessment modules measured children’s ability to read facial expressions, infer others’ perspectives, solve social problems, delay gratification, and tolerate frustration. Both studies provided evidence that (a) individual assessment modules exhibited moderate to high internal consistency and low to moderate test–retest reliability; (b) composite assessment scores exhibited high reliability; (c) together, assessment modules demonstrated a theoretically coherent factor structure; (d) factor scores demonstrated convergent and discriminant validity; and (e) controlling for IQ and demographic characteristics, performance on the assessment modules was positively related to peer acceptance, teacher report of social skills, and multiple indicators of academic achievement, and negatively related to teacher report of problem behaviors.

Web‐based Assessment of Social–Emotional Skills in School‐Aged Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…Cronbach's α for SELweb's social–emotional composite score was 0.89. Individual modules demonstrated Cronbach's alphas between 0.73 and 0.88 and were similar in magnitude to internal consistency reliabilities found in two large studies with GenEd students (McKown, ; McKown et al, ; Table ).…”

“…Participants were made aware of the second site and its investigators and were informed that only coded data without names or contact information would be shared with the other site to facilitate inclusive data analyses. After eligibility was established, participating youth completed SELweb and alternate measures of the same domains as SELweb that were also used in our prior validation of SELweb in GenEd students (McKown et al, ).…”

“…There are no minimum reading level requirements, nor do any of the activities require a verbal or written response. A comprehensive description of stimuli, response options, and scoring for all modules are described in McKown et al (). SELweb raw scores have been normed on large samples of youth and converted to standard scores ( M = 100, SD = 15).…”

“…Three studies including 8,881 kindergarten through third grade GenEd students were conducted to establish SELweb's psychometric properties (McKown et al, ; McKown, Russo‐Ponsaran, Johnson, Russo, & Allen, ). Score reliabilities for SELweb ranged from 0.78 to 0.85 in its first validation field trial, from 0.78 to 0.88 in its second validation field trial, and from 0.79 to 0.89 in its national norming study.…”

Psychometric Properties and Differential Item Functioning of a Web-Based Assessment of Children’s Emotion Recognition Skill

“…Collectively, we refer to these thinking skills as “social-emotional comprehension” (Lipton & Nowincki, 2009). The better developed is children’s social-emotional comprehension, the better they do in a range of functional outcomes (Banerjee & Watling, 2005; Blair & Razza, 2007; Denham, 2006; Nowicki & Duke, 1994; McKown et al, 2016). Furthermore, social and emotional competencies are increasingly the focus of state social and emotional learning standards (Dusenbury, Dermody, & Weissberg, 2018) and universal and indicated instructional programs (Weissberg, Goren, Domitrovic, & Dusenbury, 2012).…”