Assessing Emotional and Social Competence in Primary School
and Early Years Settings:
A Review of Approaches, Issues and Instruments
Laurel Edmunds BSc, MSc, PhD, PGCE
Research Fellow
Unit of Perinatal and Paediatric Epidemiology
Department of Child Health, University of Bristol
Sarah Stewart-Brown BM BCh, FRCPCH, FFPHM, FRCP, PhD
Professor of Public Heath
Division of Health in the Community
Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick
This project was undertaking when both authors were working at:
Health Services Research Unit
Institute of Health Sciences
University of Oxford
Old Road
Headington
Oxon OX3 7LF
All descriptions of assessment frameworks and instruments are subject to
the authors' interpretation at the time of writing and do not necessarily
reflect those of the Department for Education and Skills.
2
Page
Contents
Glossary
4
Executive summary
8
1
Introduction
13
2
Setting the scene
16
3
Methods
23
4
Issues relating to assessment and measurement of
emotional competence: the professional context
26
5
Instruments:Identified in the academic literature
Identified by contact with researchers and
practitioners: completed
Identified by contact with researchers and
practitioners: in development
40
41
46
Discussion and Conclusions
63
References
68
Appendices
Methods
Tables of Instruments
76
82
6
3
50
Glossary
Assessment: the process of collecting information for the purposes of making
decisions about individuals or as part of research to evaluate the impact of
interventions. These may involve screening, diagnosing, labelling, placing children in
programmes, monitoring of individual children, and evaluating the outcomes of
interventions and programmes.
Construct: systematic accruing of perceptions relating to the domains of self, with an
overlay of cultural and societal relevance and being amenable to assessment.
Domains: different aspects or dimensions of the self e.g. social competence,
appearance, behaviour etc.
Emotional awareness: the ability to recognise one’s own feelings and to
differentiate between them.
Emotional competence: the ability to understand, manage and express the social
and emotional aspects of one’s life in ways that enable the successful management
of life tasks such as learning, forming relationships, solving everyday problems, and
adapting to the complex demands of growth and development.
Emotional intelligence: the ability to perceive accurately, appraise and express
emotion; the ability to access and/or generate feelings which facilitate thought; the
ability to understand emotion and emotional knowledge; the ability to regulate
emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth.
Emotional literacy: the ability to recognise, understand, handle and appropriately
express emotions.
Emotional regulation: managing one’s own emotions, e.g. soothing self and
controlling the way in which anger is expressed.
Emotional wellbeing: a holistic state which is present when a range of feelings,
among them energy, confidence, enjoyment, happiness, calm and caring, are
combined and balanced.
Empathy: the ability to be aware of, to understand, and to appreciate the feelings of
others.
Formative assessment: an assessment undertaken with a view to improving e.g.
behaviour or mental health rather than judging it. It can be undertaken as part of a
profiling or monitoring exercise, and can show how competencies are developing.
Normative scores or norms: these are average scores from large numbers of
individuals that are representative of the population as a whole.
Positive mental health: Mental health is more than the absence of mental illness.
Individuals with good mental health: - develop emotionally, creatively, intellectually
4
and spiritually; initiate, develop and sustain mutually satisfying personal relationships;
face problems, resolve them and learn from them; are confident and assertive; are
aware of others and empathise with them; use and enjoy solitude; play and have fun;
laugh, both at themselves and at the world.
Psychometric testing: these are the statistical tests conducted on instruments that
assess psychological aspects of behaviour (and many other factors).
Psychopathologies: mental disorders.
Perceived competence: a general statement of ability across a domain.
Instrument reliability: tests to find out if instruments measure what they are
intended to measure in a consistent manner.
Self-concept: ‘the individual as known to the individual’. A self-description informed
by a multitude of the attributes and roles through which an individual judges
him/herself in order to make self-esteem evaluations.
Self-esteem: generally thought of as a global, relatively stable evaluative construct
that reflects the extent to which an individual feels positively towards him/herself. This
positiveness is a reflection of the criteria that are central to the value system of the
individual, which may or may not be similar to that of the society in which s/he lives.
Self-perceptions: a generic term for self-referent statements that are global and
specific about the self.
Social competence: behaviour, attitudes and understanding that support the
development of good relationships and enable children and adults to be successful in
tasks involving others.
Socially desirable behaviour: behaviours which others usually in authority deem to
be socially helpful.
Social conformity: behaving according to proscribed social rules or group norms.
Social dysfunction: behaving in a manner not acceptable in the host context and
culture which may indicate a lack of competence or an underlying psychopathology,
or presumably different values and norms to those of the host culture.
Social intelligence: the understanding of group dynamics, social status, political
relationships, interpersonal activities and leadership.
Summative assessment: an assessment undertaken to judge performance or
behaviour.
Instrument validity: tests to find out if instruments measure what they purport to
measure.
5
Instrument Names and Abbreviations
AcE
BERS
CBCL
CBCL/1½-5
C-TRF
CBCL-TRF
CBRS
CDP
CISS
CTRF
DECA
DISCO
EBDS
EBS
EDI
EIPBAS
ELA
ELLI
EQ-i:YV
FOCAL
HCSBS
ICS
ITSEA
LIS
PASS
PBCL
PIPPS
POMS
PSWQ-C
SAT
SCoT
SDQ
SPAI-C
SSBS
SSRS
STEPS
Talkit
Accounting Early for Lifelong Learning
Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale
Child Behaviour Check List
Child Behavior Checklist/1½-5
Caregiver-Teacher Report Form
Child Behaviour Check List – Teachers Report Form
Child Behavior Rating Scale
Child Development Project
Coping in School Scale
Conners’ Teaching Rating Form
Devereux Early Childhood Assessment Program
Diagnostic Interview for Social and Communication Disorders
Emotional and Behavioural Development Scales
Emotional Behaviour Scale
Early Development Instrument
Emotional Instability Prosocial Behavior and Aggression Scales
Emotional Literacy Audit
Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory
Emotional Quotient Inventory
FOCAL
Home and Community Social Behavior Scales
Interpersonal Competence Scale
Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment
Learning Involvement Scale
Pupil Attitude to Self and Score
Pre-School Behavior Check List
Penn Interactive Peer Play Scale
Process-oriented Monitoring System
Penn State Worry Questionnaire – Children
Separation Anxiety Test
Social Competence Test
Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire
Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory for Children
School Social Behavior Scales
Social Skills Rating Scale
Short Term Education and Pupil Support
Talking Tool Kit renamed Talkit
6
Executive Summary
Introduction
This review was commissioned by the Department for Education and SkilIs (DfES) .
We were asked to identify and review instruments which assess or measure
emotional competence in children aged 3-11 years, in three different but related
contexts:- early identification, profiling and monitoring. Because emotional
competence is so closely related to social competence and because the concepts are
so often considered together in the same instrument, this review also covers
instruments assessing social competence. We were asked, in addition, to undertake
a qualitative study with a purposive sample of teachers, practitioners and
researchers, to identify current concerns relating to the assessment and
measurement of these concepts.
Setting the Scene
Our report includes definitions of emotional and social competence and a discussion
of the way in which these concepts overlap with related concepts such as emotional
literacy and social dysfunction. It also includes a brief overview of the recent
development of assessment and measurement frameworks.
Methods
Our methods were designed to capture as many emotional and social competence
assessment frameworks as possible, including those that are currently available and
those in development. Searches of the published literature were carried out using six
electronic databases from 1990 to 2002 and a wide range of search terms. Notices
were posted on the CASEL and Focus Project website notice boards. Contact was
made with academics known to be active in the field. All the LEAs in England were
contacted, to identify local approaches to assessment. Letters were also sent to the
personal, social and health education advisors in all the local education authorities
and leaders in Early Years Development and Childcare Partnerships.
We aimed to identify instruments appropriate for children aged 3-11 years which
were applicable to the general population. We excluded instruments if they were
developed with and for groups of children with specific diseases or conditions, or
were published in languages other than English. We included all instruments which
appeared to assess some aspect of emotional or social competence, regardless of
whether they had been designed for this purpose. The instruments we identified were
evaluated on the basis of their content, method of application and evidence relating
to their reliability and validity and appropriateness for early identification, profiling and
monitoring of emotional or social competence. We have not commented on the
suitability of instruments for other purposes which might (see above) include the
purpose for which they were developed.
We carried out a qualitative study by mailing or telephoning a questionnaire (with
open questions i.e. respondents were given the opportunity to tell us their opinions)
to all those who had responded to our initial request to identify instruments. We also
carried out electronic searches for papers discussing measurement of emotional and
social competence in general, and searches using the names of common instruments
as the search terms. We sought information about the following issues:- the
development of instruments, the timing of assessment, the context of assessment,
7
who should carry out assessments, the nature of effective assessment, the barriers
to assessment, the significance of the teacher/practitioner, issues for high risk
groups, views of parents, teachers, practitioners and children and the purpose of
assessment. Responses were received from more than 20 practitioners (some
replies were based on the collective response of a group) with a wide range of
relevant occupations. Comments are from practitioners who found the time and were
inclined to respond and so they may or may not be representative.
Issues Relating To Assessment and Measurement of Emotional Competence:
The Professional Context
We identified a lot of interest in the assessment of emotional and social competence,
but also doubts about the extent to which assessment was possible and concerns
about the consequences of assessment. Respondents spoke mostly in the context of
the assessment of children with identified emotional and behavioural difficulties. In
this context formative assessment, which included the voice of the child and that of
many other observers, was viewed as particularly important with the aim of helping
the child. Summative assessment was viewed by some as judgemental and
counterproductive. A small number of respondents talked about assessment in the
context of identifying children who could benefit from special help. In this context as
in others, time pressure on teachers/practitioners was seen as a problem. The need
for teachers to be skilled in assessment was identified as important. Some teachers
may be more interested in developing these skills than others. Lack of resources to
help children identified as in need of help was another issue raised. A small number
of respondents also spoke about the value of monitoring the emotional competence
of the whole school to observe the impact of interventions. However, concern was
expressed by several respondents about the potential for using the results of
competence assessments to rank schools or children.
Instruments identified through literature searches and through contact with
those working in the field
We identified 58 instruments from around the world and classified them by their type
and purpose. The first group of 25 instruments were identified primarily by electronic
searching of the academic literature. These instruments were on the whole well
validated and showed good reliability. Over half of the instruments had been
developed primarily to detect antisocial behaviour and most comprised descriptions
of behaviours considered pathological by experts.
The second and third groups covered the 33 instruments identified through contact
with those researching and working in the field, the second dealing with the 23 which
were complete, and the third with the 10 in development. The second group included
fully developed instruments that have not yet been published. These differ from
those in group one in that they all include positive questions or statements and many
include aspects of emotional competence. These instruments had been subjected to
varying degrees of validation and reliability testing. Some had been developed and
tested using a psychometric approach, others using a participative, iterative
approach in which the primary concern was the face validity and veracity of the
instrument. With regard to the assessment of emotional competence some of the
most relevant instruments were still in development using newer approaches,
including child participation. We were not able to view all of these instruments and
few have yet been subjected to full evaluation.
8
Discussion and Conclusions
We found a lot of activity and interest in the assessment of emotional and social
competence. Most of the instruments included in the review focused on social
competence, but we identified several which assess aspects of emotional
competence and are potentially suitable for use in the three contexts screening,
profiling and monitoring. The instruments most relevant to emotional competence
assessment were applicable to school settings rather than early years. Practitioners
had strong views about how assessment might be used. The value of school
assessments as part of the development of whole school approaches were not widely
understood by teachers and practitioners.
9
1.
Introduction
The Department for Education and SkilIs (DfES) commissioned the Health Services
Research Unit, University of Oxford, to undertake a review of emotional competence
assessment frameworks for children aged 3-11 years and a qualitative study to
identify concerns of teachers, practitioners and researchers with regard to such
assessment. The review was based on searches from the literature base and
assessment frameworks identified by contacting other researchers and practitioners
in the field. Because the concepts are closely related and often covered in the same
instrument we reviewed measures of social as well as emotional competence. We
describe the trends in the literature and current thinking in relation to assessment.
The qualitative study revealed many concerns related to the assessment of emotional
competence. . The 58 instruments identified have been described, and all the
findings and issues are brought together in the discussion.
This report presents the findings of a project commissioned by the Department for
Education and Skills. We were asked to identify approaches to assessment of social
and emotional competence and to review instruments developed to measure these
concepts, focusing particularly on emotional competence. In doing so we were asked
to take account of the published literature, as well as the views of teachers,
practitioners, educational psychologists and researchers on the value of making such
assessments and measurements.
Emotional competence is a relatively new concept and there is still some debate
about what it entails. It has clear links, and some overlap, with the more established
concept of social competence, and in carrying out this project it has proved very
difficult to separate the two. Many of the instruments we identified cover both
concepts. The literature illustrates an evolutionary process in the development of
understanding of these concepts. Early instruments focused entirely on antisocial
behaviour and these evolved into instruments which incorporated the more positive
concepts of social competence. Later instruments recognise the emotional
underpinning of behaviour, both anti- and pro-social. Now instruments are being
developed which acknowledge and try to measure the skill which enables people to
use and manage their emotions and be socially competent – the skill of emotional
competence. Because much of this literature has been developed by those interested
in educational performance, some of the instruments also cover academic
competences.
Whilst we were undertaking searches for instruments we spoke to both practitioners
and researchers about the issues involved in measurement. They provided us with
lucid views about what assessment of this type can and cannot be expected to do. It
is clear that there are still diverse views about emotional competence, and varied
opinions on the practicality and appropriateness of trying to measure children’s
development in this regard. It is also clear that assessment and measurement is
potentially useful in several different contexts, and that each of these demands
something rather different of the instruments. The contexts we identified were:
helping teachers/practitioners and others to identify children with poor emotional
competence (screening); helping to identify individual children’s emotional strengths
and weaknesses in a range of different settings (profiling); helping teachers and
practitioners to identify ways to support such children’s emotional development
10
(improving practice); and helping to monitor emotional development, an important
component of improving practice (monitoring progress). Most of those we talked to
spoke about assessment with individual children in mind, but we also identified
interest in whole school approaches. In the latter context assessment might aim to
gauge the capacity of schools and settings to foster and develop emotional
competence, identify those which are more or less successful in this regard, offer
support to the less successful schools and settings and monitor their progress
towards improvement.
It is clear that emotional competence, albeit under different guises and described
using different terminology, is something which is beginning to be of interest to a
range of different disciplines, and that people working in many of these disciplines
are beginning to tackle the challenge presented by assessment and measurement.
The new UK Foundation Stage Profile (QCA, 2002), which replaces baseline
assessment with a single exit assessment proposes a number of items reflecting
emotional and social development (e.g. forms good relationships with peers, displays
a strong sense of self-identity, and is able to express a range of emotions fluently and
appropriately) based on best practice, but the validity and reliability of this profile
have yet to be measured. Teachers/practitioners are also looking for methods of
assessing emotional and social competence beyond the Foundation Stage. There is
therefore, a need to identify reliable and valid measures of emotional and social
competence that might be suitable for use particularly in early years and primary
school settings.
Chapter 3 of the report describes the methods we used. Chapter 4 entitled ‘the
professional context’ describes the responses and conversations we had with
practitioners and researchers relating to their interest in, and concern with, effective
and appropriate assessment of children from this perspective. Chapter 5 briefly
describes the 58 instruments we identified both from the published literature and from
contacting people active in developing research and practice in this area. We
reviewed the reliability and validity of each instrument as well as documenting the
purposes (screening, profiling etc.) for which it might be useful. These details are set
out in a series of tables in Appendix II. We have identified a wealth of interest in this
challenging area of research and practice and the main findings and conclusions are
set out in a condensed form in the Executive Summary.
1.1
Aims and Objectives
We aimed to identify literature relating to emotional competence assessment and
to identify published and unpublished instruments and those in development. We
also aimed to identify views relating to emotional competence assessment among
those working in this context in England.
The objectives were:


To search electronically for research describing issues surrounding the
measurement of emotional competence.
To review this evidence and report on published studies from 1990 onwards.
11





1.2



To search electronically for assessment frameworks and tools for measuring
emotional competence in children 3-11 yrs and developed since 1990
To search for assessment frameworks which are not yet in the public domain
or were not identifiable in the electronic searches, by contacting those known
to be active in research or development in this area.
To describe the assessment frameworks and critically appraise their content,
reliability and validity.
To contact those working in the field in England to gather their views on the
measurement of emotional competence.
To review issues related to emotional competence measurement and
comment on the instruments identified in the light of these issues.
What the report will not do
Identify and describe every instrument that has been developed.
Identify all the concerns of teachers/practitioners or present the results of a
representative survey.
Describe all the projects that teachers/practitioners and others told us about, in
which they aim to promote emotional and social competence in schools and
settings.
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2.
Setting the Scene
This section defines the concepts of emotional and social competence and relates
them to other concepts such as emotional literacy. It describes the reasons for the
current interest in assessment and provides a brief review of its history. It provides
definitions of emotional and social competence, describes how these relate to other
similar concepts and touches on the difference between social competence, socially
desirable behaviour and social conformity. It describes the way in which instruments
have evolved from those whose contents were defined by experts with a view to
identifying children with problems, to a more child-centred holistic approach, which
takes account of social contexts and the impact of the observer. It concludes by
describing our approach to the identification and description of assessment methods.
2.1
What is emotional competence?
The term ‘emotional competence’ is relatively new and there is still some discussion
about its meaning, particularly the way it relates to concepts such as emotional
literacy (Sharp & Faupel, 2001) and emotional intelligence (Salovey and Mayer,
1990). Emotional literacy is defined as ‘the ability to recognise, understand, handle
and appropriately express emotions’ (Sharp & Faupel, 2001 p. 1). Emotional
intelligence is a somewhat broader concept, which includes emotional literacy. It is
defined as ‘the ability to perceive accurately, appraise and express emotion; the
ability to understand emotions and use emotional knowledge; the ability to access
and or generate feelings which facilitate thought (creativity), and the ability to regulate
emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth (Salovey and Sluyter 1997,
p10). Emotional regulation includes for example the ability to self soothe and to
manage anger. The first two components of emotional intelligence are very similar to
emotional literacy, the second two are broader. Elias (Elias et al., 1997) defines
emotional competence as ‘ the ability to understand, manage and express the social
and emotional aspects of one’s life in ways that enable the successful management
of life tasks such as learning, forming relationships, solving everyday problems, and
adapting to the complex demands of growth and development’. This definition
includes all the attributes of emotional literacy and most of the attributes of emotional
intelligence, but places these in the context of relationships and problem solving.
Emotional competence and emotional intelligence are therefore concepts with a
common core. This common core is emotional literacy. The definition of emotional
intelligence extends to cover the contribution which these aspects of human
functioning make to creativity and intellectual growth. The definition of emotional
competence extends to cover their contribution to relationships and to problem
solving. Emotional competence, as defined here, therefore overlaps with social
competence (see below).
There is consensus among those who have studied these concepts, that emotional
literacy, competence and intelligence are important for lifelong achievement, and for
the development of emotional and social wellbeing and positive mental health. The
latter is a term which has been developed by those working in health promotion to
circumvent the problems created by the euphemistic use of the term ‘mental health’
to refer to mental illness services. It covers self confidence and self esteem,
resilience, agency and autonomy, the capacity to learn, grow and develop, creative
thinking, and trusting, supportive, respectful, interpersonal relationships (Mental
13
Health Foundation website). The areas of overlap with emotional intelligence include
the capacity to grow and develop, and creative thinking. Emotional literacy is
necessary for the development of supportive, respectful, trustworthy relationships
and successful relationships are also part of the definition of emotional competence.
Emotional competence is therefore also related to positive mental health. Agency
(the belief that one can have an influence on the world), autonomy (the ability to think
and act independently of others) and resilience are attributes of positive mental
health which are not explicitly covered in definitions of emotional competence,
emotional intelligence or emotional literacy, but are necessary for growth and
development. Weare has argued cogently that autonomy is important for social
competence (Weare, 2000) and Steiner has proposed that emotional literacy leads to
emotional wellbeing and positive mental health because it enables individuals to act
autonomously (Steiner, 1997).
We have construed social competence as behaviour, attitudes and understanding
that support the development of good relationships and enable children and adults to
be successful in tasks involving others. This definition is concordant with the
definition used by Weare (Weare, 2000) in which she describes the three key
attributes of social competence as empathy, respect and genuineness. Emotional
competence plays an important part in the development of social competence
because it enables children and adults to identify and think about their feelings,
handle them appropriately and to make a decision about how to behave in the light of
both their feelings and their thoughts. For example, an angry child instead of
displaying impulsive aggressive behaviour can make the decision to explain what it is
that has made him/her angry and request whatever it is that he/she would prefer.
This is likely to get a response from others that improves relationships. Aggression,
or the other common emotionally incompetent alternative of withdrawal, are likely to
result in a deterioration of relationships. Until recently, academics and practitioners
have paid more attention to children’s problem behaviour and lack of social
competence than to the positive aspects of social competence and the emotional
underpinnings of behaviour. Many have focused in particular on socially undesirable
behaviour (that which others deem inappropriate in certain settings). Much of the
work in this area has been conducted in the USA and has originated in the need to
identify children with social and behavioural problems in order that they might be
offered specialised help.
It is important to make the distinction here between socially competent, socially
desirable and socially conformist behaviour. Social desirability often includes an
element of social conformity – of not rocking the boat. It may also include behaviours
that suit the assessor – children who withdraw rather than complain when they are
distressed by something an adult has said or done. Emotional competence, however,
does not necessarily lead to socially conformist behaviour. Indeed in some instances
it might require non-conformist behaviour – taking an ethical, but unpopular stance
for example. It also might encourage children to take issue in a mature way with adult
behaviour, when the latter is distressing them. Topping, however, has argued that the
concept of social competence includes ‘processing and using the ability to integrate
thinking, feeling and behaviour to achieve social tasks and outcomes valued in the
host culture and context’ (Topping, 1998). If the host culture does not value
dissenting voices, or assertive children, as in the examples given above, such
behaviour would fall outside the Topping’s definition of social competence. In the
14
North American literature, particularly in early publications, the concept of social
competence is clearly conflated with social conformity and compliance with social
norms. These measures of social competence are therefore often concerned with
behaviours that benefit adults rather than children (John, 2001; Weare, 2002).
Although in certain circumstances – for example in resisting peer pressure to take
drugs – parents, teachers, practitioners and society in general value autonomy in
children, in others they appear to demand compliance. Conformity in children makes
the job of parents, practitioners and teachers easier, but it may be counterproductive
in terms of the development of desirable attributes such as positive mental health and
good citizenship. We have taken the line that compliance and conformity are not an
essential part of social and emotional competence. We have, however, had to work
with a literature which has used the term social competence to mean something
slightly differently from the way we have defined it here.
2.2
The historical context of assessment
Some early papers on the subject of social competence from the 1970s and 1980s
assumed that social behaviours, both desirable and undesirable, could be discrete,
that is that they were not part of overall behaviour patterns, related to personality
traits, nor context specific. Measurement might focus on an undesirable behaviour
such as ‘hitting’, observing whether children did or did not hit out in reaction to
artificial, socially challenging situations in a laboratory. It did not take into account the
fact that hitting is one observable end point of complex emotional/social interactions
dictated in part by a particular social situation, not a discrete behaviour to be elicited
in isolation from the social context. Instruments attempting to assess behaviours in
this way have been shown to lack social validity because they do not represent what
happens in the real world of the child (Bierman and Welsh, 2000). Others working in
this field have questioned whether antisocial behaviour and social competence are
even part of the same continuum (Merrell et al., 2001). Merrell has suggested that it
may not be possible to infer levels of antisocial behaviour from instruments
measuring social competence.
Many early instruments were developed on the basis of observations of experts
about what constituted socially desirable/undesirable behaviours. They devised the
contents and went on to test their instruments on relevant populations. Many of these
instruments proved to have strong psychometric properties (they had good reliability
and validity), but their contents limit their usefulness. They were developed from the
belief that the observations of experts could be entirely objective. There is now ample
evidence that the researchers’ own beliefs and attitudes, which are socially and
culturally constructed, have an impact on the contents of such instruments and on
how these instruments are used/recorded with individual children. There is also
evidence that children’s beliefs and goals impact on their relationships and behaviour
but, as yet, these have not been integrated into measures of social competence,
described as social functioning by Dweck and John (Dweck, 1991 cited by John,
2001). This evidence is leading researchers to develop instruments which incorporate
the child’s voice and recognise that their behaviour may be a reaction to the people
who are observing them.
Researchers have been aware of the fact that individual characteristics and
experiences, with peer groups in particular, are important in the process of adapting
15
to the social environment, facilitating the development of a wide range of social skills
(Braza et al., 1993). However, it is only recently that this thinking has begun to inform
instrument development. One project currently in progress in Bristol is exploring with
11-12 year-olds how they would evidence doing well at school (Tew, personal
communication, May 2002). Tew has discovered that the evidence children use is
different from that which teachers/ practitioners would deem appropriate. Children’s
evidence was not based on academic achievement. The instrument Tew is
developing is an example of one based on the child’s view. The assessment tool
developed for the Enable Project (Banks et al., 2001) also incorporates the child’s
perspective. This instrument has undergone several iterative stages over the past ten
years evolving in response to the views of those using it. It enables the practitioners,
researchers and children using the instrument to voice their opinions about which
behaviours are relevant to them.
Prior to the 1990s, many instruments were developed with the aim of identifying
children with specific conditions and pathologies and their content focused on the
negative. In response to concerns about the need to recognise and build on strengths
there has recently been a move to develop instruments which also assess positive
generic attributes and strengths. The latter are more appropriate for work with
‘normal’ populations. This change has been accompanied by changes in terminology.
In the early ’90s, authors were interested in social behaviours and behavioural
problems, i.e. observing behaviours and inferring social problems, whereas latterly
authors are more likely to focus on competences (Mitchell-Copeland et al., 1997;
Fantuzzo et al., 2001). This approach has enabled the development of instruments
that aim to work in partnership with children to help them improve their emotional and
social competences. Such instruments enable formative assessments – those whose
primary purpose is to support development – as opposed to summative assessments
whose primary purpose is judgement about whether a child is competent or
incompetent. They are useful for profiling children and for supporting improvements
in practice. In spite of these advances, many instruments in current use still require
raters to score children on the basis of behaviours which are deemed by experts to
be abnormal, with the primary goal of identifying problem children. These do not
require the raters to reflect on the social context in which the behaviour is being
observed nor the child’s view. Such instruments tend to be more evident in the
context of screening to identify problem children.
2.3
Approaches to assessment
Instruments have therefore been used in different ways. They all share the aim of
improving outcomes for children, but support rather different approaches to doing so.
Broadly speaking they fall into three categories – early identification (screening),
profiling (perspectives from different sources about the same child or school) and
monitoring.
Screening instruments need to be able to separate children who are likely to need
special support or intervention from those who do not. As they need to help
practitioners make a judgement, they are summative. Because all children will be
screened, these instruments also need to be appropriate for mainstream children and
quick to administer. They also need to have high sensitivity (which means they will
miss few children) and specificity (which means that they will not incorrectly judge
16
mainstream children and those with special needs). They can be completed by a
range of different observers including the children themselves. However the fact that
they work well as a screening instrument with one type of observer (e.g. teacher)
does not mean that they will work well with another (e.g. child). Independent
evaluations need to be undertaken of their reliability with each reporter. Screening is
only worthwhile if the problem sought is not obvious to a casual observer. It is also
only worthwhile if an effective intervention is available to children identified as having
problems. Although the latter are characteristics of screening programmes not
screening instruments, they are important in deciding whether screening is likely to
be worthwhile.
Instruments suitable for profiling need to be able to describe a child from many
different perspectives in such a way that they enable both adults and children to
identify what might be done to improve their emotional and social competence.
Profiling is therefore formative and it requires different observers. It provides an all
round picture of a child and suggests approaches and interventions that would
support the development of the child’s emotional and social competence. As it is
usually used with children whose development is less than optimal, the instruments
do not necessarily need to be appropriate for all children.
Instruments suitable for monitoring need to be able to assess change over time. They
need, like profiling and screening instruments, to be valid and reliable, but they also
need to be able to detect change accurately. So they need to help a practitioner
decide whether what they are doing with a child is resulting in improvement.
All three types of instrument can be used for individual children or for groups of
children in a school, classroom or early years setting. In the latter case the aim
would be to identify schools or settings in need of special support (screening), or to
identify the strengths and weaknesses of a class and suggest ways of supporting
class development (profiling). Monitoring is often carried out at the group level and in
this case precision is not so vital. Instruments which are not very accurate at
individual level can sometimes perform as very reliable indicators of progress at
group level.
2.4
Our approach
We have taken a broad approach to identifying instruments, aiming to examine those
developed by different disciplines in different contexts. We have used the authors’
terminology when describing the instruments, but also tried to clarify what the
instruments actually measure. We have documented the purposes for which the
instrument was developed, the age group for which it is recommended, the context
for its use, and who it is recommended should carry out the assessment. In reviewing
the literature, and in speaking to practitioners and researchers, we have also aimed
to establish the purpose of assessments, what is viewed as effective assessment,
what the barriers to assessment are, the significance of the assessor in the process
of assessment, any specific issues relevant to high risk groups (those who are likely
to be at higher risk of emotional or social incompetence e.g. children in families living
in social deprivation and groups, those from some ethnic minority groups) and the
views of parents, teachers, other practitioners and children on assessment.
17
These background details are vital to the successful application of instruments.
However, it would seem that this information is rarely reported in the academic
literature relating to instrument development. In their review of six rating scales,
Demaray et al. (1995) comment that no background information such as the above
was available for instruments reviewed. This is partly due to limitation of space in
journals, but also due to the publication biases. From a scientific point of view
objective details such as the psychometric properties (validity and reliability) of
instruments seem to be regarded as of pre-eminent importance and this background
information of less interest. Practical issues associated with the use of instruments
are more likely to be reported by authors who have used the instruments as part of
another study. For some of the instruments we identified from the peer-reviewed
literature, we have conducted secondary literature searches in an attempt to answer
these questions.
18
3.
Methods
This section describes the methods used to gather the information presented in this
report. It describes the electronic searches of the published literature, our approach
to contacting academics who are active in research in this area at the moment and
methods of contacting practitioners working in this field in England.
3.1
Identification and critical appraisal of instruments and assessment
frameworks
The project aimed to identify as many approaches to, and instruments for, assessing
and measuring emotional and social competence as possible, including those that
are currently available and those in development in 2002. Instruments were identified
through a variety of methods. Literature reviews were conducted by searching six
electronic databases from 1990 to 2002. These databases were:
ERIC
PsychInfo
Sociofile
Health Star
Medline
Embase
Education research articles
Journal Articles and Chapter/Books (Psychological research)
Social Science Citation Index
Journal articles (Health research)
Journal articles (Medical research)
Journal articles (Medical research)
The search strategy was broad, aiming to identify instruments covering emotional
literacy, emotional intelligence, social competence and socially desirable and
problem behaviour, as well as emotional competence. Search terms included:
emotional competence, social competence, emotional literacy, emotional intelligence,
emotional awareness, emotional regulation, interpersonal sensitivity, emotional
wellbeing, behaviour and mental health. All of the above were searched in turn with
each of the following terms: assessment, instruments, measures and tools.
A notice was posted on the Centre for the Advancement of Social and Emotional
Learning (CASEL) website notice board with regard to our search for emotional
competence assessment frameworks, and the study was flagged up on the Focus
Project (promoting effective practice in child and adolescent mental health) website.
This UK project was launched in 1997 and aims to promote clinical and
organisational effectiveness in child and adolescent mental health services, with an
emphasis on incorporating evidence-based research into everyday practice. One of
their objectives is to collate and disseminate up-to-date knowledge of effective
practice, both in terms of health and social care interventions and of the
organisations which deliver care. The child database of the Oxford Outcomes Project
was also searched. This database is part of a larger one documenting the
development and application of questionnaires, interview schedules and rating scales
that measure states of health and illness from the patient’s perspective. These
instruments are completed by patients to provide a measure of their experiences and
concerns in relation to illness, health status and quality of life. The database is
funded by the Department of Health to support health services research, by enabling
researchers to identify valid, reliable and appropriate measures for use in their
studies. It currently contains 310 records of outcome measures relevant to child
health and wellbeing including emotional and social wellbeing.
19
Contact was made with academics known to be active in the field.
All the LEAs in England were written to, to identify approaches to emotional
competence assessment in current use. Letters were also sent to the Personal Social
and Health Education (PSHE) advisors in all the local education authorities and lead
officers in Early Years Development and Childcare Partnerships.
The criteria for selecting instruments for inclusion in the review were:
 for use with children aged 3-11 years in early years settings and schools,
 applicable to the general population aged 3-11 years (or where instruments
were developed for specific populations, involved mainstream or ‘control’
children as well).
Exclusion criteria:
 instruments developed with and for disease-specific populations,
 instruments developed or published in languages other than English,
 instruments and scientific papers published before 1990.
In choosing to restrict our searches to 1990 onwards, we were aware that this would
exclude well-established instruments measuring some aspects of social competence
(e.g. the Waksman Social Skills Rating Scale, and the School Social Skills Rating
Scale (cited in Demaray et al., 1995). Our rationale for the restriction was the lack of
mention in the literature prior to this date of the concepts which were the focus of the
review – emotional competence, emotional literacy and emotional intelligence. We
have included all the instruments we identified which touch in any way on these
concepts, even though many of them focus on social competence, abnormal
behaviours and psychopathologies (John, 2001).
It is unlikely, given the state of development of electronic coding of this literature, that
we have identified all potentially relevant instruments. We have, however, identified a
wide range of instruments and believe that those we found provide a good overview
of those that are currently available.
The following information was extracted about each instrument:
 type and content of the instrument,
 characteristics of the population on whom it had been tested,
 method of application,
 descriptions of tests for validity and reliability of the instruments.
Instruments were evaluated on the basis of their content, method of application and
the evidence relating to their reliability and validity in relation to the assessment of
emotional and social competence. These results are described in the tables in
Appendix II.
Some of the instruments we included were designed primarily to assess
competences/pathologies other than emotional/social competence as defined in this
report. Our appraisal of these instruments relates to their suitability for assessing
emotional or social competence and not to their suitability for their intended purpose.
20
3.2
Identification of issues and concerns relating to emotional competence
assessment
We were asked, in addition to identifying instruments, to identify published literature
and current opinion primarily in England in relation to key concerns with respect to
the measurement of emotional competence. The issues were:








what is the purpose of assessment?
when should children be assessed and in what context?
who should carry out the assessment?
what is effective assessment?
what are the barriers to assessment?
what is the significance of the teacher?
are there any special issues for use with high risk groups?
what are the views of parents, teachers/practitioners and children?
We addressed this request in three ways. In our electronic searches of the literature,
we identified and obtained papers whose titles and abstracts suggested that they
discussed these issues. We also conducted a secondary search of the literature
focusing on five commonly used instruments covering different aspects of social and
emotional competence (Interpersonal Competence Scale, ICS; Infant and Toddler
Social and Emotional Assessment, ITSEA; Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire,
SDQ; Home and Community Social Behaviour Scales, HCSBS; Child Behaviour
Checklist, CBCL) to identify studies relating to instrument use rather than
development and validation. This literature has contributed to our discussion of the
issues throughout the report and is referenced as appropriate. Findings of particular
relevance to individual instruments are reported in Section 5 where the instruments
are discussed.
In addition, we developed a brief semi-structured questionnaire , which covered these
questions. We mailed, emailed or telephoned the questionnaire to all those who had
responded to our initial written communication to researchers, LEAs, Personal and
Social Health Education (PSHE) and Early Years Development and Childcare
Partnerships. As the questionnaire was given only to those who had already heard
about the project and expressed an interest in what we were doing, it was preceded
only by a brief preamble to explain why we were requesting the information. The
responses were analysed and grouped into themes under each of the questions or
comments. Because the results of this initiative are important in terms of setting the
scene for the presentation of instruments, we present them first.
21
4.
Issues Relating To Assessment And Measurement Of
Emotional Competence: The Professional Context
This section describes the responses of the practitioners and researchers who
responded to our survey asking for their views on key issues in emotional
competence assessment, such as whether such assessment should be developed,
what the purpose of assessment is, who should carry it out, and what the barriers
are. It also includes the views of researchers who have published on the topic. We
identified a lot of interest in this area but also some doubts about the extent to which
assessment was possible and what the consequences of assessment might be.
Respondents spoke mostly in the context of assessment of children with identified
emotional and behavioural difficulties. In this context, formative assessment, which
included the voice of the child and many other observers, was viewed as very
important with the aim of helping the child. Summative assessment was viewed by
some as judgemental and counterproductive compared with formative assessments.
A small number of respondents talked about assessment in the context of identifying
children who could benefit from special help. In this context as in others, time
pressure on teachers/practitioners was seen as a problem. The need for teachers to
develop skills in this area was seen as important. Lack of resources to help children
identified was another concern. A small number of respondents also spoke about the
value of monitoring the emotional competence of the whole school to observe the
impact of interventions. Several respondents expressed concern about the potential
for assessment to be used to rank schools or children.
We posted nine questionnaires, sent out 44 by e-mail and conducted five interviews
by telephone. We received 23 replies. Respondents included teachers, PSHE
advisors, EYDCP managers, personnel from a national programme to improve selfesteem and resilience in primary school children, a primary schools drugs advisor,
researchers and a group of educational psychologists. Two respondents found
themselves unable to answer the questions, suggesting that responses needed to be
context-specific (educational psychologist, EYDCP manager). Both from this exercise
and from the letters we sent out to LEAs and PSHE advisors, we gauge that there is
a lot of interest in the measurement and development of emotional competence
amongst those working in education in England. However, it is important also to note
that the views expressed are from a motivated sample with the time and inclination to
respond. They cannot be assumed to represent the views of all those working in
primary and early years education in England, but similarity of responses may be
indicative of a range of some widely held views. Because all those who responded
have an interest in the area and are themselves grappling with the issues at the
moment, they are, however, likely to represent an informed view.
We have grouped responses under the headings listed above (see 3.2), retaining
each respondent’s choice of headings as much as possible. This gives an accurate
reflection of what they thought was relevant to the topic, but occasionally we have
reassigned comments to improve clarity of interpretation. All respondents were from
England unless otherwise indicated. We have identified them by their occupation or
discipline.
22
4.1
Development of assessment frameworks
Only researchers chose to comment on this issue and the responses, perhaps
predictably, were positive – ‘emotional and social competencies are central to
effective learning. Combining assessment for personal development with assessment
for learning may be the best tool we have for raising achievement!’ (researcher). One
thought that in addition to individual assessment, frameworks should be developed to
assess ‘group dynamics and interaction’ as these ‘… promote positive relationships’.
Some reported a need to develop instruments that were socially constructed, i.e.
involved the participants in their context and/or developed assessment from the
child’s perspective. The national programme practitioner said ‘We are aware of a
number of different approaches in different authorities and by different organisations.
A standardised approach would obviously provide more comparative data, but would
not necessarily meet everybody's requirements’.
4.2
When and in what context should children be assessed?
Most respondents agreed that baseline assessment at entry to school was important,
but also considered age-appropriate assessment to be of continuing importance at
older ages. One of the researchers suggested, ‘abilities such as empathy are more
appropriately assessed at Key Stage 2’. While one respondent suggested that ‘It is
perfectly possible to do an observational assessment at any age’, she also said
assessment ‘in the early years and at primary age would yield information about
social skills’. Most respondents said ‘as early as possible on entry to school or
nursery’. Caveats were offered about the context, suggesting that children should be
assessed ‘in play context as the child goes about daily tasks … not isolated
assessment tasks but structured part of daily activity’ (principal educational
psychologist). Other respondents mentioned a range of settings in which the baseline
and later assessments could take place. These included child development centres,
special school nurseries and mainstream pre-school settings.
The view was expressed that assessment ‘should not in any circumstances be about
judgement or for normative purposes’ (PSHE advisor); rather ‘it should be formative
assessment – i.e. encouraging children’s own self-awareness and personal
development. It should be relatively informal and should not be associated with any
one subject area’ (researcher). A primary school drug education advisor interested in
assessment to inform planning suggested ‘a formative assessment … to be made
one half- term before the block of learning begins. [it] should be related specifically to
the desired outcomes for the following half term and should inform planning, teaching
and learning and … summative assessment’.
Responses tended to be specific to the context in which the respondent was working.
School practitioners see children most days during term time, whereas educational
psychologists see children for specific reasons on specific occasions. A teacher will
see children in their class on a daily basis during the school term, whereas specialist
practitioners only see a child when there is a cause for concern. This difference was
illustrated by one of the Special Needs co-ordinators, ‘It depends on how formal the
assessment is. Children are assessed all the time, but in an informal way in school.
When you do the baseline assessment at entry, children respond in one of two ways,
they either shut down or go over the top. We carry out a fuller one at six months and
23
then again at a year or when they leave. I think it’s dangerous to do too much formal
assessment with children when they are too young’.
Responses indicate that most people interpreted the question in the context of
supporting children with identified behavioural problems, not in relation to the
development of emotional competence in the general population of children or the
identification of children with such problems in schools or early years settings. When
a child with behavioural problems is assessed depends on Local Education
Authorities’ processes and the length of time it takes to gather information about a
child from other sources such as social and health services. School practitioners and
educational psychologists both highlighted the need for a ‘clear cross-service
approach between health and education. Health visitors have a lot of useful
information that does not always reach the school or nursery’.
In contrast, the published literature was more concerned with instruments which were
appropriate for mainstream populations of children. While most researchers
suggested an age range over which their instruments were applicable, few were
prescriptive as to exactly when they should be used. One of the US researchers
pointed out that a benefit of a standardised instrument is that it is ‘intended for all
children’ and can be used to ‘obtain pre-post-test ratings’. This respondent also
stipulated that ‘raters must know the child for a minimum of four weeks before doing
an assessment’ using the instrument with which she was associated.
4.3
Who should carry out the assessments?
One of the main themes to emerge from the responses to this question was that child
self-report was important and should be included whenever possible. Some
researchers working with older children reported that they were developing
instruments specifically to give children the opportunity to self-report. One had called
her instrument a ‘Talkit’.
With regard to other raters, most respondents suggested adults who knew the
children and possibly peers were the appropriate sources of information; ‘adults who
are in regular contact with the child, i.e. health visitors, teachers and teaching
assistants’ (PSHE co-ordinator) or alternatively, ‘the individuals who actually rate the
child are teachers and parents who are with children on a daily basis’ (US
researcher). Some respondents felt that it was important for children ‘to have formed
a relationship and basic trust with the adult observing them’ (principal educational
psychologist). A school practitioner suggested; ‘this should be self-assessment,
teacher observations and maybe peer assessment. It should be based within the
educational context’ (senior PSHE advisor). Researchers tended to put ‘children with
their teachers’ as their main choices. The nature and severity of the child’s problems
influenced responses. ‘If the child is considered a single agency referral i.e. not
severe and complex and therefore not falling under the remit of the Joint Agency
Team, then usually education support staff or speech and language therapists will be
asked to provide the assessment’ (inclusion co-ordinator). The range of professionals
mentioned that might be involved in assessment included pre school advisory
teachers, portage advisory staff, speech and language therapists, occupational
therapists, physiotherapists, sensory impairment advisory staff and educational
psychologists.
24
A response from an inclusion co-ordinator highlighted the influence of the setting on
the assessment and the potential influence that teachers/practitioners have on the
process: ‘… the settings themselves have a key role to play. They [teachers] don’t
always seem to accept responsibility for this, for a variety of reasons’. One of the
principal educational psychologists stated: ‘Emphasis … should be placed on the
development of cross service work. Assessment should become part of accepted
good practice rather than an “add-on”’. One criticism raised about specialist
assessment was that ‘the child often has lots of adults and equipment around them
and so don’t behave in their usual way’. The respondent would have preferred a
method of assessment that provided an ‘everyday picture’ of the child so more help
could be given (head teacher, Special Needs school).
The research literature reflected many of the views expressed by the practitioners
and researchers we spoke to in this study and confirmed that it matters who reports.
Martens (1993) suggested that: ‘for behavioural rating scales and checklists, one of
the most important systematic sources of variance leading to non-random
fluctuations in test score, is the informant’ (p. 310). For example, the person carrying
out the assessment may have prior judgements about particular behaviours that differ
from those of other raters. These judgements are likely to bias all the ratings that
person makes in the same way, (hence systematic). Although measures based on
instruments completed by adults are relatively easy to obtain and are much used,
they are influenced by ‘a variety of conceptually independent adult-valued variables’
(Braza et al., 1993, p.146). These tend to emphasise positive attitudes and socially
desirable behaviours. Therefore any instruments that are reliant upon observers are
inherently subjective, being open to error and bias. These unsystematic sources of
variance can be countered somewhat, but not entirely, by using psychometrically
sound instruments. Demaray et al. (1995) suggest that any single assessment is
bound to be limited and that best practice demands multi-sources, multi-situations
and multi-methods.
4.3 a Parents
Respondents highlighted the reliability of parental contributions to assessment
‘people who know children best, key workers and parents’. However the Head of a
special school added ‘but wouldn’t rely on them [the parents]’. She did not qualify this
statement. One of the principal educational psychologists took a different perspective
and made this point with respect to ‘relationships between home and school – trust
and respect are of paramount importance (and have to be established) before
parents will share crucial information about their child, particularly if they feel they are
[labelled as] not “good enough” parents’. The national programme personnel also
pointed out ‘teachers are the primary source of information for the assessment, but
we would also advocate that parents, children and other professionals who know the
children be involved in any overview – there is evidence that a parent's opinion of
their child’s needs can be very different from that of professionals’. Both parents’ and
teachers’ opinions of a child may also reflect their needs as well as those of the child.
An unbiased picture is most likely to be gained by gathering data from more than one
source.
Some issues relating to parents as raters were covered in the literature. In a study
using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) with 2,000 primary school
25
children in Singapore, mothers returned higher scores than fathers (Bibou-Nakou et
al., 2001). A Greek study using the same instrument showed that parents tended to
rate their children as showing more emotional problems, and teachers more conduct
disorders (Bibou-Nakou et al., 2001). Depressed mothers rate their children more
negatively (Fombonne et al., 2001). These differences may be attributable to
differences in the way the child behaves in different contexts or to differences in the
opinions of the observers. Despite this, Carter et al. (1999) in a laboratory-based
study has shown that mothers can provide competent ratings of their child’s problem
behaviours as early as one year of age (Carter et al., 1999).
4.3 b Teachers/Practitioners
The respondents made few comments about teachers/practitioners specifically, but
this was a topic that was covered in other questions and by the literature on
assessment. One respondent offered the following: ‘This requires skills in the teacher
akin to those used in counselling. They have to remain non-judgemental and
respectful of the child’s current position. They have to provide the emotional “space”
for the child to reflect meaningfully on their feelings and actions. Some teachers are
skilled listeners who can create the required emotional climate, but many are not.
Most could learn the skills, the question is whether they would want to’
(practitioner/researcher). ‘To introduce emotional literacy as a mainstream
component of education will require a philosophical change from didactic teacher to
facilitator of learning. This might be a smallish step for primary teachers to make, but
a large one for many secondary teachers’ (advisor/researcher).
The academic literature raised similar issues about teachers/practitioners as raters to
those it raised about parents. Merrell (1993) reported that teachers make efficient
and effective reporters because they see children on a regular basis over a period of
time in situations in an area not observed by other adults. Bierman and Welsh (2000)
felt that teachers and peers are better placed than parents to comment on children’s
behaviour in peer relationships. Teachers’/practitioners’ judgements, however, like
those of parents, are subjective. Behaviours that may be the norm (however
undesirable) in one school may be exceptional in another. Individual children may
become labelled as troublemakers throughout a school. Systematic variation in
scores both by school and by teacher can be demonstrated (Bierman and Welsh,
2000; Harris et al., 1993).
There is evidence that variability between teachers’ and peer assessments increases
as children get older (Fombonne et al., 2001). School contexts can be very different
and competences that are expressed in class can be very different from those in free
play indoors, in the playground or in games lessons (Harris, 1979, cited in Bierman &
Welsh, 2000).
4.3 c Peers
Peers were thought by researchers in particular to be a useful source of information
in assessment, but as Braza (1993) pointed out, asking peers to rate their
contemporaries often provides a reflection of their popularity rather than their social
competence. Also interactions between two children need to be viewed from the
perspectives of each child. For example if one child hits the other as part of a “rough
26
and tumble”, the response of the second child is important to make a judgement, i.e.
the second child could laugh as part of the play or get upset because it was
inappropriate and painful (Bierman and Welsh, 2000).
4.4
What is effective assessment and is it possible in the current climate of
quantifiable, objective measurement?
Responses to this question were mixed with many respondents questioning whether
objective measurement was desirable or possible and those associated with
instrument development championing it. Nearly all the English respondents were
apprehensive about summative assessment and preferred formative assessment.
The latter is usually based on multi-dimensional instruments which include the
perspectives of a range of different people and employ more than one method. This
type of assessment is carried out with the intention of identifying areas of
development where help is needed. Other respondents, particularly those developing
instruments, believed in quantifiable and objective measures where a single score is
derived from an instrument.
‘Effective assessment is … assessment which is valid and reliable. We would
contend that for emotional competency the process (formative assessment) is the
key not the outcome (summative assessment). We do not feel that there could be a
quantifiable, objective measurement although there are useful ways of assisting a
child to work through the process’ (educational psychologists). This was reiterated by
two of the researchers: ‘effective assessment needs to be conducted over time, not
on a “one off test”. It does not lend itself to “tick box” type assessments where
children are categorised, it is far too complex for that’; and: ‘I do not think that this
area of development is open to quantifiable/objective measures. It involves personal
subjective evaluations and motivational issues which are often only accessible to the
person themselves, particularly as they grow older. In my personal view, part of the
growth and development is wrapped up in being asked to make subjective
assessments of performance in different social and emotional situations and seeing if
the repertoire of strategies can be increased and tackle it differently next time. What
purpose does an objective measure serve? It does not serve the best interests of the
growing and developing person,’ (researcher). The national programme practitioner
thought that ‘effective assessment has to be a measurement that is appropriate to the
audience and context … the results of which can provide adequate comparable data.
… It should be used as indicative only and used with sensitivity. Ultimately, it should
be possible to build up a critical mass of information to produce meaningful statistics’.
Some respondents from England acknowledged the climate of objective
measurement and its potential uses and harms. A senior PSHE advisor said: ‘if we
are to value the development of these skills then using formative assessment is
important’. One of the principal educational psychologists thought assessment should
be proactive and used in the context of screening. ‘It highlights children “at risk” or
particularly vulnerable and aims to develop strategies to support them before the
issues impact too greatly on overall achievement, including academic performance.
Therefore, it is of crucial importance that it does not require children to “fail” before
support is offered’. Another caveat came from one of the researchers: ‘Scores are not
a good idea, but a profile, or portfolio, or learning narrative which includes celebration
of achievement as well as self directed new goals for development may be useful’
27
(researcher). Another issue was raised by one of the researchers about using the
‘tick box’ approach. ‘Pupils will often give what they perceive to be the correct answer
rather than what they would actually do’.
The group of special needs co-ordinators had very clear views about what
assessment ought and ought not to be. They considered assessment should include
a ‘setting that has information about the child’s learning styles which allows them to
differentiate… [where] there is advice and support on suitable resources; [where]
parent/carers are involved and understand and support the process; [where] the child
has very clear easily measurable individual targets that allow success for that
individual to be seen and measured by all concerned including the child; [where] the
individual setting has confidence to manage and teach the child and the child is
happy, as are parent/carers’. They were also clear about what assessment was not:
‘jumping through hoops to [complete] a statement; a single-minded route to a
diagnosis/disease label which then generates no other support help, confidence, or
success for the child; an opportunity to say that an individual child is “beyond” the
help of any particular setting; an opportunity to “label” an individual child and
therefore limit their ability to achieve, in whatever field’.
The literature searched identified papers cautioning that ‘performance based
methods of assessment need to reflect the complexity and range of naturally
occurring interactions in children’. These authors were concerned about interpretation
of behaviour. For example, a child who prefers constructive object-oriented play may
appear to be socially withdrawn, but not be socially dysfunctional.
4.5
What are the barriers to assessment?
Both practical and philosophical barriers were identified in response to this question.
The practical barriers included time, which was an issue for many respondents,
workload and covering the curriculum. ‘Often children must be observed in a variety
of situations before an accurate picture emerges of their needs. The time and cost
implications are therefore considerable’. Some of these comments were qualified with
statements such as ‘but assessment is an integral part of good teaching so if used
wisely there should be no barriers. There would be immense difficulties in my view if
the assessment were used to label and to judge the abilities of individual children –
one against another’ (senior PSHE advisor).
One of the practitioners gave a ‘real world’ response. ‘Assessing emotional
competence would be valuable but needs enough time. Assessment is often
seen/treated as a bolt-on and there isn’t any funding for it. If you carry out baseline
assessment properly, it’s very time consuming if it is to give a fair and meaningful
portrait of the child. But people cut corners because of number of children and so it
doesn’t get done accurately, with the result that teachers think it is a waste of time.
There are considerable dangers with the climate of objective measurement whatever
the area of assessment but more so with the “soft skills”. The thought that we might
give young people an EQ score as well as a SATS [Standard Assessment Tests
(national tests)] score as they leave school makes me shudder’ (head teacher,
special needs school).
28
Other practical barriers that emerged included: ‘a lack of responsibility within the
school for inclusion so nothing happens while [the school] waits for outside agencies
to take responsibility; a lack of liaison between the professionals involved; looking at
assessment as an end [point] rather than using it to inform future planning; lack of
experience on the part of teachers; a lack of training/expertise and support [for
teachers/practitioners]; confidence to change [teacher/practitioner] attitudes and
practices; and willingness to assess children for purposes other than the child’s
wellbeing’ (senior PSHE advisor) [i.e. teachers will conduct assessments for the
child’s benefit but not necessarily for other reasons such as comparisons between
schools or settings]. Other barriers reported included ‘the lack of sufficient resources
to undertake an assessment and lack of the administrative support necessary for
involving children and parents’ (national programme practitioner). Assessment might
be seen as just ‘more paperwork’ for teachers/practitioners, which would be selfdefeating.
The group of educational psychologists expressed their experiences and thoughts on
barriers. ‘For schools we believe it is a lack of understanding/acceptance of the
importance of this area in relation to learning and achievement. We feel that it is good
that emotional competency/literacy is a subject for discussion in education and hope
that schools will take on the need to understand where the child is “at” in order to
help them learn effectively’
One of the advisor/researchers described potential barriers outside the school. ‘If the
assessment takes the form of an objective, summative measurement, then there
could be objections from various quarters, including parents. If the child is socially
unskilled or emotionally uncontrolled, who are we assessing? Arguably in the case of
a young child, we are assessing the parents! They might object!’
Another principal educational psychologist included a potential barrier for the child.
‘For children themselves the main barrier is that they may be referred by staff for
group work to overcome low self-esteem but actually perceive themselves “well”
based on their reference groups.’ Also as one of the researchers pointed out
‘focusing on measurable outputs may be accompanied by a negative impact on self
esteem’.
None of the respondents mentioned a lack of a suitable instrument as a primary
barrier. Respondents who were developing instruments advocated theirs because
they were ‘easy to use and time efficient’ (US researcher). These respondents also
raised some provisos: ‘the instrument is an adult’s interpretation of a child and it is
just a sample of behaviour.’ For instruments involving child self-report, concern was
raised about language: ‘the child may get it wrong because s/he may not understand
or s/he understands the concepts but can’t demonstrate it’ (head teacher, special
school).
4.6
What is the significance of teacher (assessor) skill, judgement and
evaluation in assessment? What training is required?
The consensus view was that ‘teacher professionalism and vision is central’
(researcher) and that teachers/practitioners had to be emotionally competent
themselves. This was illustrated by the following: ‘the skills required are those of a
29
good teacher. If we are going to encourage teachers to actively support the
development of the Behaviour Curriculum Skills (Social and Emotional
Competencies) then they will need to understand what these skills are and how to
teach them. With reflection, the ability to assess the skills will inevitably follow’ (senior
PSHE advisor). The national programme practitioner proposed their instrument
circumvented any teacher inconsistencies: ‘we are primarily looking for comparable
information within one peer group, so a certain lack of objectivity by the teacher can
be accommodated, particularly if other parties are able to contribute to any
assessment’.
Phrases such as ‘very significant’, ‘critical’ and ‘vital’ were frequently used in relation
to teachers’/practitioners’ skills as assessors, but with the proviso that ‘it should not
be seen out of context of what parent/carers have to offer about their particular child’.
The issue of training also came up from two perspectives. Firstly, the educational
psychologists thought there was a need to ‘understand what being emotionally
competent means and that it’s not just about administering checklists’. Secondly,
there was the issue of training teachers/practitioners to put ‘good assessment
processes in place for all children first as well as good working systems with
parent/carers. Making timetabling opportunities for observation and assessment and
making it a priority, as well as doing something with it when it’s done’ (inclusion coordinator). A researcher suggested, ‘basic experiential training in emotional literacy
should be part of initial teacher training and continuing professional development.
Teacher judgement and the manner in which that judgement is made is critical. A lot
can be talked and modelled in relation to this domain and thus teachers themselves
need to be competent and able to model appropriate strategies and relationships’
(researcher). ‘Skilling teachers/practitioners in this area can have a huge preventative
effect’ (researcher).
One of the US researchers highlighted the advantages of the instrument with which
she was involved. One of the main advantages was that no training was required to
complete the instrument (DECA), but training was needed to implement the
accompanying DECA programme. The only requirement for the instrument was for
the adult rater to have known the child for four weeks.
4.7
Are there separate issues for different high-risk groups of children, e.g.
social class, SEN, ethnicity, gender?
The primary response to this question was that children need to be considered as
individuals and so the ‘high risk’ aspect of their backgrounds was of secondary
importance. ‘[This is an] important but not [a] separate issue[s] if all children are
understood in their personal context’ (principal educational psychologist). One of the
US researchers pointed out that norms are not available for different groups of
children - that is ‘high risk’ and ‘not high risk’. The only different norms that have been
published are those relating to parents and teachers as observers. This means that it
is possible to assess whether a ‘high risk’ child is different from the normal
population, but not whether she/he is different from other children in the same ‘high
risk’ group. ‘
30
Special educational needs (SEN) were not seen as a particular problem (senior
PSHE advisor). One reason for this may reflect a new approach to thinking about
SEN. One newly renamed Inclusion Co-ordinator (who had been a senior SENCO),
was at the forefront of a countywide shift in approach: ‘get inclusive systems in place
for all children and only then call in outside support agencies if these systems are not
sufficient to inform planned success for an individual’.
Cultural and language differences were flagged up as an assessment issue
(researcher). A PSHE advisor suggested taking a broad approach to assessment to
accommodate ethnic and religious differences and ‘work with the broader school
community to come up with a framework’.
Gender came up as an assessor issue. Many of the practitioners working with young
children are women and one senior PSHE advisor suggested that this may affect how
children were assessed: ‘There are also gender issues and concern that this might
be a “female” approach to life’. Early years settings and primary schools tend to be
populated by females which may favour girls in terms of teaching and learning
experiences. Some respondents were concerned about brain research showing
developmental differences between boys and girls. It is ‘important to consider boys’
readiness for school and [we] need to develop their understanding of emotion and
feelings’ (principal educational psychologist). The suggestion here is that children
may need to be assessed against gender specific norms, which take into account the
developmental lag in boys compared with girls, and that most boys are likely to need
additional support to develop emotional competence and school readiness.
Other comments included the need for further research into what are the risk and
resilience factors and the ‘need to look beyond the traditionally accepted “high risk”
groups, as many children of professional parents are now at risk’ (principal
educational psychologist). Support for parents together with community capacity
building was seen as important to effect sustainable change in disadvantaged areas.
Findings from the literature with respect to high-risk groups indicated that social
behaviours need to be interpreted against a background of the socially constructed
environment which can vary from one culture to another. Eye contact is an example
of behaviour regarded an important component of social competence in Caucasian
cultures, and as an inappropriate behaviour for girls in certain Eastern cultures. As
Fantuzzo et al. (1995) point out, instruments with norms that have been established
with white middle-class populations run the risk of classifying non-mainstream
children as deviant rather than different. This is particularly pertinent as ethnic mix
changes over time and numbers of children from ethnic minority populations grow
(Fantuzzo et al., 1995). Saarni (1997) raises a similar issue. By mid-childhood
children are incorporating others’ behaviours towards themselves into their selfsystem (which is intimately linked with emotional experiences in different
environments). Children’s first experiences of society outside the home are likely to
take place in early years or school settings. If groups are comprised of children from
different cultures, whose first language may not be English, assumptions about the
appropriateness of social interactions may present a challenge. This is a situation
that practitioners in many early years settings and schools are coping with on a daily
basis.
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4.8
Views of schools/teachers/practitioners on assessment
Some respondents questioned how seriously the results of assessments were taken,
particularly when they were not allocated time to do it properly, or when checklists
were issued with little background information on how they were going to be used. As
one teacher said ‘the danger of asking teachers to fill in another assessment form
that just appears is that if it doesn’t look like it’s being treated seriously, they won’t
treat it seriously’ (special needs teacher). It would seem however that it is possible to
introduce assessment without these problems. One of the researchers commented
that the teachers she had worked with thought that the instrument she was piloting
was a helpful way of tracking change, and that the process had not added to their
workload.
The view from outside the classroom was typified by this response: ‘In my experience
teachers do not seem to object to the idea of assessment but are unwilling to have
another type of assessment to do’ (senior PSHE advisor). Another response covered
this point and the issue of teacher emotional/social competency. ‘I suspect that if
teachers were asked to formally assess yet another aspect of children’s lives and
performance, they would revolt. They would also probably feel less than competent to
make these kind of judgements, though with a little reflection, they would certainly be
skilled enough to help children to reflect on their social and emotional competence
and create the kind of climate which would engender discussion about difference and
maybe more appropriate ways of handling themselves and/or situations’
(teacher/researcher). From a practical perspective, the national programme
practitioner who had experience of overseeing 30 schemes said ‘Very varied!
Generally our checklist is accepted because it is not particularly time consuming and
the scheme is not an intrusive intervention for either school or children – in fact it
works in a remarkably non-stigmatising way. The likelihood is that a more intense
assessment session would provoke more intense views’.
4.9
The importance of the child’s voice – self-assessment
Most respondents described the child’s voice as ‘vital’, ‘absolutely essential’, ‘critical
and central’ or words to that effect. Respondents felt that without listening to the
child, assessment would be unlikely to achieve its aims; ‘without honouring the
student voice it will fail or be damaging’ (researcher). Other points raised in this
context included pointing out that ‘listening to the child’s voice may become tokenistic
and that it is important to listen and hear. Children show feelings and anxieties
through actions and not just words’ (principal educational psychologist). As one
researcher stated; ‘Emotional literacy is closely tied with self-concept, and it is difficult
to see how judgements can be made by an “other” in these areas. The child’s view is
paramount’.
Including the child’s voice has practical implications, but respondents considered that
even quite young children could make a valuable contribution to their own
assessment. Some respondents suggested similar solutions such as the need for
appropriate presentation and the ‘use of concrete symbols/photos and reword
(change the language) so that it is age appropriate with child’s experience’. The
practitioner from the national programme was more practical: ‘Whilst the child's voice
should undoubtedly be involved in any assessment, effort needs to be given to the
most appropriate method for doing this. Our schemes will generally use simple
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pictograms (drawings of cartoon-like characters depicting emotions) at the outset of
the club sessions and repeat the exercise, together with verbal, written, pictorial
representations at the end. Several schemes are considering introducing sociograms
(similar to pictograms, but depict a social situation) as an assessment method and
we will be particularly keen to assess how this has impacted on the scheme’.
In her review paper, John (2001) advocates including the child’s voice in assessment
and suggests that children as young as six years can contribute. Harter (1993), in
developing her self-perception profile for children, stated that from the age of about
eight years onwards, children were quite capable of describing their self-perceptions
across six different domains including global self-worth and social competence. Even
younger children have been able to provide information predictive of social
competence. Emotional perceptiveness scores derived from self-report by pre-school
children, predict adaptive social behaviours and academic competence four years
later after controlling for components of intelligence and personality, with high scores
predicting positive social behaviours and low ones predicting problem behaviours
(Izard et al., 2001).
4.10 Other issues raised
Three of the respondents (PSHE advisor, educational psychologist and a
researcher/advisor) raised the issue of assessing the school. The researcher/advisor
highlighted her experience of ‘monitoring the effects on [inappropriate] behaviour and
attitudes in the school, which demonstrated the transference of emotional literacy
skills to real situations.’ For example in one school the number of “warnings” given to
children was monitored over time and shown to fall significantly. In the same school
the ability of the pupils to take responsibility in decision making was observed to
increase and teachers reported much lower stress levels. Children also showed an
increased ability to resolve conflicts without resort to adults and there was a fall in the
number of “outbursts” by children. In the view of this researcher, ‘assessment on this
scale is just as informative of the effects of intervention as the assessment of
individual children’. She was highlighting the importance of assessment of the whole
school and the demonstration of generalised improvements in behaviour and
attitudes. All children benefit from these changes. This approach lessens the need for
all staff to be highly emotionally competent and lessens any stigma attached to
focusing on individual children.
Purpose and benefits of assessment – the ‘so what?’ issue. What are
assessments used for?
This issue provoked some of the longest responses of all. Respondents said these
sort of comments to us:- ‘The whole issue of assessment … is a thorny one’
(advisor/researcher). ‘The use of the phrase emotional competence implies that you
can also be emotionally incompetent and I have a problem with that’ (researcher).
‘They should not be just performance indicators for the establishment’
(teacher/researcher)’. Some respondents had serious concerns about how the
information would be used (practitioners). Others questioned the existence of
emotional competency as a separate entity (educational psychologists). These
responses suggest that assessment of emotional competence will need to be
introduced with caution and that sensitivities need to be taken into account.
4.11
33
One area of sensitivity is that assessment will be judgemental. An inclusion coordinator said ‘I think the reason for assessment is to inform the way that we promote
it [emotional competence]. Most importantly to find out if our approach to working with
young people in this area is effective and secondly, to identify and support those who
find it more difficult. Once assessment is deemed to be judgemental then this will
erode the work that we are doing to promote these skills’.
Other respondents expressed concern about the accuracy of assessment tools. ‘We
should be humble about what any assessment device actually tell us – there is not
any absolute truth but some indications of how a child is developing’ (PSHE advisor).
Another respondent reported ‘being emotionally competent is an aspiration for all
children and not just the problem ones’.
Many respondents from different backgrounds considered the major benefit of
assessment to be helping the child; ‘Our team feels strongly that assessment
instruments are only beneficial if the information is used to guide the development
and implementation of plans that benefit children’ (US researcher). However, not by
judging the child; ‘They should only be used to assess how effective we are at
promoting these skills with a view to enhancing the skills/competencies not to judge
how emotionally competent/intelligent a child might be’ (inclusion co-ordinator).
The concern raised by the whole issue of emotional competence assessment is
illustrated by the following; ‘If assessment is used for target setting and [setting]
performance criteria, then I will despair. The problem with incorporating a greater
emphasis on the personal, emotional and social aspects of growth and development
into the current educational context is that the former is philosophically at odds with
the latter. Teachers and children will become increasingly confused about their roles
in the system and the likely outcomes are anger or apathy’ (advisor/researcher). A
further issue for teachers/ practitioners was that they perceive little help to be
available to children who they have found following assessment to be in need of help.
Consequently, they questioned the purpose of completing the checklist. ‘What is the
point of assessing children if there is no extra help, time or resources for them’
(PSHE co-ordinator). Even when respondents identified a clear purpose for
assessment, they still warned of adverse consequences; ‘If assessment cannot be
matched by appropriate service provision, it will undoubtedly result in cynicism
towards the process’ (national programme practitioner).
Examples from the literature showed that measures have been used for many
purposes, but two of these predominate. The first is to identify children in need of
special support in the development of these competencies (screening). The second is
to measure changes in mean levels of, for example, social competence in school
populations as a consequence of intervention. The use of instruments in formative
assessment to profile a child in order to find ways of supporting their development
was not covered to any great extent.
The concerns of many of the respondents we spoke to was summarised very
eloquently by the following; ‘Assuming the term “emotional competency” could be
satisfactorily defined (we could not agree a definition) it would have to be recognised
that our personal levels of emotional competency vary from hour to hour, day to day
34
and year to year. The very use of the term “emotional competency” raises problems
as it implies that this exists as an entity in itself. As a group of educational
psychologists we contend that there does not exist a “gold standard of emotional or
social competency” against which everyone – adult, young person or child –
should/could be judged. If such competencies exist and if they are measurable, they
must be acknowledged to be context-based. When assessing any aspect of a
person, and most importantly when assessment will look at that person’s core values,
it is ethically indefensible not to consider the person holistically i.e. in relation to all
other attributes of themselves, taking account of the norms of their social group, their
family, their peer and their reference groups’.
‘If it is agreed by others that emotional competency exists and is a measurable entity
then the “so what” question must be asked of the whole of society. Do we want a
uniform level of competency? If anyone falls below the acceptable level do they lose
their job, their rights as an individual or as a parent, their access to education? Who
would be doing the judging and for what purpose? This is so value-laden that as
working psychologists we would wish to play no part in the measuring or the judging
unless it arose from the child’s own perceived need’.
As a balance to the general negative concerns, we include an actual example of
assessment having a positive impact in a school from an advisor/researcher. ‘The
work on emotional literacy formed part of a whole school improvement action plan.
We were trying to effect change on behaviour and attitudes in the school, and saw
developing emotional competence as the key both to this and to developing
motivation and independence, resulting in higher attainment. The assessment was
therefore used to demonstrate progress towards these targets on a whole school
basis, and was tied in with other factors such as behaviour records. This was very
productive. The purpose in this case was not to focus on individuals. The tool could
have been used to highlight areas of strength and weakness in individuals and inform
teacher planning. There were certainly individuals who stood out as having difficulties
in some areas, and had anonymity not been promised, this would have useful
information for the teachers concerned’.
It is clear from our discussions with people working in early years and school settings
that there is a lot of interest in the development of emotional and social competence
in schools/settings and recognition of its importance. Most respondents recognised
that assessment could be valuable, but at the same time there were serious concerns
about how assessment might be used. Although these concerns may have little
grounding in reality they would be likely to get in the way of attempts to introduce
assessment and would need to be addressed with teachers and practitioners
beforehand.
35
5.
Instruments and Assessment Frameworks
This section describes the 58 instruments we identified, classifying them by their type
and purpose. These instruments represent an interest in this area of work from
around the world. The first part details the 25 instruments identified primarily by
electronic searching of the academic literature. Here instruments were well validated
with good reliability. Some focused specifically on identifying children with social
incompetence and behavioural disorders and tended to focus on undesirable
behaviours from an adult perspective. Over half of the instruments focused on
problem behaviour, only a small number including a component of emotional state or
development. The second and third parts cover the 33 instruments identified through
contact with those researching and working in the field, the second part dealing with
the 23 which were complete, but which were not identified in our electronic searches
of the literature and the third part with the 10 instruments in development. We found a
continuum from those covering only social competence to those covering only
emotional competence, with most covering only social competence and the next
largest group covering some aspects of both. These instruments differed from those
described in part one in that all of them included at least some statements or
questions about social or emotional competencies as opposed to ‘incompetencies’.
These instruments had been subject to varying degrees of validation and reliability
testing. Others represent the efforts of schools and settings to assess emotional
competence or of those developing instruments with a specific focus such as
reintegration into mainstream schooling. Development of these instruments reflects
the change in attitudes detailed in the section 2.2 - the historical context of
assessment. A shift is observable from instruments in which the contents focus on
observed socially undesirable or non conformist behaviour to those focusing on the
child’s strengths and the emotions underpinning behaviour. The development of
some later instruments, but not the earlier ones has been iterative, and has often
included the views of children. Most of the early instruments have been
psychometrically tested, but this was not always the case for the later instruments
where such testing was deemed by some to be inappropriate.
The third category covers instruments still in development which were more likely to
focus on assessing emotional competence. Several adopted innovative methods of
testing. Their state of development was such that we were not able to see all of these
instruments and few have yet been subjected to all the necessary validity checks..
The descriptions of these instruments were true at the time of writing, but these may
change during the course of their future development.
We identified a total of 58 instruments that aim to measure some aspect of emotional
and/or social competence to some degree. Each instrument is listed in the tables of
Appendix II. We have divided the instruments into three groups depending on
whether we identified them from publications in the academic literature or from
contact with researchers and practitioners active in the field. The latter group has
been subdivided into instruments whose development is completed and those that
are still in development. The instruments have been developed in a range of
countries including the USA, the UK, Canada, South Africa and Belgium. In Appendix
II, the contents and method of development of each instrument are described
together with evidence relating to their reliability and validity. In a second table, we
describe for each instrument the age range for which it is appropriate, who completes
36
it and in what setting, and in the third table we comment on the development of the
instrument and the purposes for which we consider that it is suitable, together with
any relevant comments from authors. Instruments are identified by their abbreviated
names because this is the way they are most commonly described in the literature.
The full title of each instrument is listed on page 7 in alphabetical order.
5.1
Instruments identified in the academic literature
We identified 25 published instruments and assessment frameworks covering
aspects of emotional and/or social competence. The first group include wellvalidated instruments with good reliability, developed with the aim of identifying
children with problem behaviour. Their contents tend to focus on behaviours that
adults regard as undesirable. The second group covers instruments measuring social
competence. They also include some items covering aspects of emotional
development. In several of these, the emotional component reflects emotional states
(smiles a lot, seems unhappy) rather than emotional competence. The third group
includes instruments which do not fit neatly into either of these groups. They have
been included to illustrate the different methods and approaches used to assess
social and emotional competence. We identified one instrument which aims to
measure aspects of the social competence of schools/settings, as opposed to
children. Together, all these instruments serve to illustrate historical approaches to
assessment and the variety of methods which can be used to make assessments.
5.1 a Measures focusing on problem behaviours
Most of the instruments we identified in this category were developed in the early
1990s. They requested information from teachers about children’s behaviours,
including how they interact with others. Most of the items in these measures focus on
a range of negative behaviours such as fighting, damaging property or self-exposure
rather than children’s strengths. They also cover items such as over-reaction and
withdrawal, which are arguably components of social competence.
Some of these instruments are related. For example, a series of instruments, the
Child Behaviour CheckLists (CBCL), have been developed by Achenbach
(Achenbach, 1991; Achenbach & Rescorta, 2001). Some of these instruments were
developed in the 1980s and therefore the development papers were not picked up in
the searches. The CBCL (Costenbader & Keller, 1990) and the CBCL-TRF (Teacher
Report Form) (Harris et al., 1993) are parent and teacher versions of the same
instruments covering anxiety, withdrawal, depression, unpopularity, self-harm,
obsessive/ compulsion, inattention, over-reaction and aggression. In addition to the
original CBCLs, there are also two instruments for pre-school children; the Child
Behaviour CheckList for 1.5 to 5 years and the Caregiver-Teacher Report Forms for
ages 1.5 to 5 years (Achenbach & Rescorta, 2000).
The HCSBS (Lund & Merrell, 2001; Merrell, 1993) and the School Social Behaviour
Scales (SSBS) (Emerson et al., 1994; Merrell, 1993) were developed by the same
author for parents and teachers (respectively). The parental instrument (HCSBS)
has two scales, one focusing on conformity, the other on problem behaviours. The
teachers version has two scales with three defined sub-scales in each. The first
scale includes interpersonal skills, covering items concerned with judgements about
how other children respond to the child in the school environment; self-management
37
focusing on conformity; and academic achievement. The second scale covers:hostile/irritable, anti-social aggressive and disruptive/demanding behaviours. These
instruments have been revised recently (HCSBS, Merrell and Caldarella, 2003;
SSBS, Merrell, 2003). The Conners’ Teacher Rating Scale (CTRS-28) (Fantuzzo et
al., 2001) is another teacher rating scale covering three constructs, social
behaviours (e.g. temper outbursts), hyperactivity and passivity. The last of this type
of instrument, the Social Skills Rating Scale (SSRS) (Gresham and Elliot, 1990;Elliot
et al., 1993) was designed to assess children with significant behavioural problems.
These instruments are typical of early approaches to identifying social competence
focusing on behaviours that adults regard as undesirable. They capture behavioural
outcomes expressed during social interactions in the school setting. As their main
purpose is to allow adults to identify problem children, normal or pro-social
behaviours are not covered and children who do not have significant problems are
likely to get low scores. These instruments can have significant ‘floor’ effects,
meaning that most children achieve the optimum score. They do not therefore
discriminate children with mild problems.
5.1 b Measures covering some aspect of emotional development
Seven of the instruments covered some aspects of emotional development or state
(e.g. levels of sensitivity, miserableness or aggressiveness), but not all of these were
directly relevant to emotional competence. Four were designed for younger children
and in three of these (Infant and Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment, ITSEA;
Penn Interactive Peer Play Scale, PIPPS; and Preschool Behaviour Checklist,
PBCL), social competences and behaviours dominate the emotional components.
The ITSEA (Briggs-Gowan & Carter, 1998) although designed for very young
children (1-2 years) was developed with 2-3 year-olds and can be used with 3 year
olds. This instrument aims to assess socio-emotional competences and
complements other diagnostic tools. One of the five scales, the ‘competencies
scale’, includes the emotionally relevant sub-scales empathy, emotional positivity
and emotional awareness. Pro-social behaviour and peer relations are also covered.
The ‘competencies scale’ also includes attention skills and compliance so scores do
not measure emotional and social competence alone. This scale provides an
example of positive items e.g. ‘smiles a lot’, ‘tries to do as you say’, but the other four
scales in this instrument are worded negatively and focus on problem behaviours.
These include in the externalising scale ‘hides misbehaviour’, in the internalising
scale ‘is very clingy’, in the dysregulation scale ‘refuses to eat’ and in the
maladaptive scale ‘ swears’.
PIPPS (Fantuzzo et al., 1995) and PBCL (St James-Roberts et al., 1994) both
include a small number of items recording emotional states (smiles, seems unhappy
and miserable, fearful) and also desirable social actions (helps others). The other
items in both scales are concerned with a lack of social competence and in the case
of the PBCL, developmental/behavioural items (wets, soils, unclear speech).
FOCAL (Mitchell-Copeland et al., 1997) is a research tool that records event-based
emotional interchanges in which children’s emotions are noted (happy, sad, angry,
afraid, hurt, tender etc.) as well as their responses to others’ emotions (positive or
negative reinforcement, helping, comforting, affect match – positive, opposite or
38
negative, looking, ignoring etc). Pre-school children are observed for five minutes on
12 occasions in free play in the classroom and the scores derived from the
observations form the basis of the assessment.
Three instruments aimed to assess social and emotional development in older
children. One of these, the Interpersonal Competence Scale (ICS) (Cairns et al.,
1995) covers academic competences (e.g. good at spelling, math) as well as social
competencies (e.g. popular with boys/girls) and emotional states (e.g. smiles a lot,
argues, cries). The SDQ, a UK developed instrument (Goodman, 1997), includes
positive items such as ‘considerate of other people’s feelings, being helpful, unhappy
and fearful’. The remaining items predominantly reflect problem behaviours. This
allows raters to assess children from a positive and negative perspective.
The Separation and Anxiety Test (SAT) (Duffy & Fell, 1999; Wright, Binney & Smith,
1995) directly assesses the emotional awareness and insight of children aged 8-12
years. Children are presented with vignettes and photographs and asked to say how
they would feel if the stories were happening to them and how they think the people
in the photographs feel. This instrument was designed to assess attachment, and
responses are therefore scored on the constructs of attachment, self-reliance and
avoidance.
The Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale (BERS) (Epstein et al., 2002) is an
instrument with five subscales three of which are relevant to the measurement of
emotional and social competence. The ‘affective strength’ subscale is particularly
relevant, including items such as ‘identifies own feelings’ and ‘ability to give and
receive affection’. The ‘interpersonal and intrapersonal strengths’ subscales are also
relevant: items include ‘shows concerns for the feelings of others’ and ‘manages
anger effectively’. The subscales for school functioning and family involvement are
less relevant. Although this instrument is designed to identify children with emotional
and behavioural problems who are in need of extra support (screening), all the
statements are phrased in a positive way (e.g. accepting of affection rather than
rejects affection). It was developed following research undertaken with parents,
children and teachers and therefore represents more than the ‘expert view’. It is
suitable for children aged 5-18 years. At present it is designed for adults to complete,
but a self report version is in development. This instrument was one of a small
number identified in the published literature which is relevant for the assessment of
emotional competence. It might be useful for monitoring and profiling. Although
developed and recommended for screening it would need further testing in this
context.
The Emotional Instability, Prosocial Behaviour and Aggression Scales (EIPBAS)
(Caprara & Pastorelli, 1993) assesses emotional instability, prosocial behaviour and
aggression and can be used as a self-report instrument by 7-11 year-olds and by
adults. The emotional assessment here is concerned with the child’s capacity to
refrain from impulsivity and emotionality.
5.1 c Other instruments
We identified several instruments that are potentially interesting in the context of the
assessment of emotional and social competence that do not fall neatly into either of
the above categories. Two of them, the Bully-Victim scales (Austin and Joseph,
39
1996) and the Diagnostic Interview for Social and Communication Disorders
(DISCO) (Wing et al., 2002) were recently developed in the UK and so have a
cultural relevance. The first examines perceived bullying and victimisation in
mainstream children and is one of the few self-report instruments that we identified.
The relevant items have been added on to the Harter Self Perception Profile
(Harter, 1993) The second instrument (DISCO) is an extensive interview which aims
to establish the diagnosis of autism. These scales were developed with mainstream
children as well as those with special needs, and therefore cover the continuum of
competence in social interactions.
The Social Ability measure (Braza et al., 1993) is a rather different type of
instrument, which assesses social competence on the basis of diversity of social
contacts and behaviour. This observational instrument was designed to gauge 5
year-olds’ social development for research purposes.
The following instruments were included to illustrate the diversity of potential
approaches to measurement of these concepts. The Penn State Worry
Questionnaire for Children (PSWQ-C) (Chorpita et al., 1997) is designed to elicit
anxiety and asks children about worry. This is another self-report measure. Children
are asked to assess an internal trait without recourse to behaviours or social
situations. For example, they are asked to rate their ‘worries’ (e.g. my worries really
bother me) hypothetically and not in relation to specific circumstances. The Social
Phobia and Anxiety Inventory for Children (SPAI-C) (Beidel et al., 1995) is another
measure of anxiety designed for teachers to complete. It is interesting because it is
based on the ability of adults to assess children’s emotional states through
observation of behaviour. The Child Behaviour Rating Scale (CBRS) (Broder et al.,
2001) like the DISCO was developed with children with and without specific medical
conditions (in this case, cranio-facial abnormalities). It examines social interaction.
The Dominic-R: A Pictorial Interview (Valla et al., 2000), was designed to detect
mental disorders in 6-11 year-olds. The instrument is a series of pictures (of
Dominic, who can be male or female) in varying situations. Children are asked to talk
about the pictures and their responses enable the diagnosis of simple phobias,
separation anxiety, over-anxiousness, depression, attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder, and conduct disorders.
5.1 d Instruments assessing social and emotional competence of
schools/settings.
The Child Development Project (Solomon et al., 2000) is an instrument that aims to
measure the social wellbeing of the class and school. It was developed in the
context of a programme to help teachers create a caring community in the classroom
and school. It is a student report instrument in which two thirds of the items are
phrased positively. It covers the three key attributes of healthy interpersonal
relationships:- respect, trust and empathy. Whilst this instrument does not directly
touch on emotional competence, the development of a caring classroom or school
would require such skills from the teachers and pupils. The items include statements
which imply emotional competence e.g. ‘when someone in my class does well, every
one in the class feels good’ and ‘people care about each other in this school’.
40
5.2
Completed Instruments identified by contact with researchers and
practitioners
We identified 23 instruments, which our searches did not identify in the academic
literature, with one exception, through contact with researchers and practitioners
working in the field. These instruments differ from those in the previous group, in that
none focused solely on problem behaviours and all contain some positively phrased
items. Several contain items which measure emotional competence.
5.2 a Measures focusing on primarily social competence
One group of instruments aimed to detect children with emotional and behavioural
difficulties, but these differ from instruments identified in 5.1a in that they cover both
positive and negative aspects of behaviour. Few have items which touch on
emotional competence in the sense that it has been defined in this report, but some
include aspects of emotional wellbeing and resilience. The Adaptive Social
Behaviour Inventory (ASBI) (Hogan et al., 1992) is a teacher rating scale that
assesses social competence in 3-5 year-olds on three scales, expression,
compliance and disruption, with the aim of identifying emotionally and behaviourally
disordered (EBD) children. Clarbour and Rogers considered this scale when
developing their more recent Emotional Behaviour Scale (EBS) (Clarbour and
Rogers, in press) which assesses adolescent emotional coping strategies and
focuses on social anxiety, malevolent aggression and social self-esteem. The latter
is aimed primarily at adolescents but can be used with children as young as eight
year-olds. The Devereux Early Childhood Assessment Program Instrument (DECA)
(LeBuffe & Naglieri, 1998) was developed in the US and has versions for teachers
and parents, covering initiative, self-control, attachment and behaviour, and is based
on resilience and protective factors. This instrument assesses aspects of emotional
competence including expressing feelings appropriately, ability to share, seeking
help and showing interest and co-operating with others. (e.g. listen to or respect
others and calm himself/herself down when upset), with more than half the items
phrased positively. It is appropriate for 2-5 year-olds. It can provide individual
profiles as well as class profiles and is potentially useful for screening and
monitoring. The Boxall profile (Bennathan & Boxall, 1998) grew out of the Nurture
Group movement. It seeks to identify the areas of difficulty in accessing education
for children entering school from severely disadvantaged backgrounds and to help
teachers plan focused interventions and monitor progress. It is standardised on 3-8
year olds. Both the Boxall profile and the DECA are part of programmes to support
children with disordered development – the DECA supports a class-based approach
and the Boxall Profile a nurturing approach in a group. The Fast Track programme
in the US, an intervention primarily designed to prevent serious and chronic
antisocial behaviour, has been associated with the development of a series of
instruments (Greenberg et al. website, no date). These include a multifaceted series
of measures – child interview, and parent and teacher rating scales for children of
varying ages. The emphasis of Fast Track instruments is on social rather than
emotional competence and they tend to focus on negative behaviours.
5.2 b Measures which include assessment of the impact of social and
emotional competence on learning
A second group of instruments assess social competence, emotional development
and behaviour, but in the context of their impact on learning. Those developing these
41
instruments include emotional and social competence in their scales because they
are clear that they have an impact on learning. These are all teacher-rating scales.
The Early Years Profile (Hereford & Worcester Partnership, 1997) is completed on
entry to full time education and is intended to reflect a child’s attitude, attributes and
understanding mostly about educational subjects. The Short Term Education and
Pupil Support (STEPS) is a teacher rating scale developed by Stockport Borough
Council for measuring social skills related to learning which has a different
construction. Each item has positive and negative aspects, e.g. attentive and listens
vs distracted and inattentive respectively. The scoring is on a 1-6 scale, with positive
behaviours scoring 6-4 and higher frequencies of negative behaviours scoring 3-1.
The Learning Involvement Scale (LIS-YC) (Laevers, 1994), is designed for use with
3-5 year-olds to assess the extent to which children are emotionally engaged in the
process of learning. Assessors have to be trained using videos. This instrument can
be used with both individuals and classes, with versions for other age groups
including adults. The Emotional and Behavioural Development Scales (EBDS)
(Riding et al., 2002) can be used with a larger age range as the descriptors can be
applied to 5-16 year olds. This is a brief checklist that covers social/emotional and
development behaviours with one third of the instrument about learning outcomes.
Another UK instrument, the Pupil Attitude to Self and School (PASS) (Goodall,
2002), assesses attitudes to self and school in relation to learning. This has a similar
age range, 8-16 years and covers 50 child self-completion items. This has
standardised norms for the UK population and can be used to assess the individual
child or the school. One instrument, the Early Development Instrument (EDI) (Offord
& Janus, 2001) is a population-based measure for communities, which assesses
readiness to learn in kindergarten children. This Canadian instrument has a
comprehensive section on social competence and emotional health, which does not
directly assess emotional competence, but also includes physical health, cognitive
development and communication skills. There is some evidence that the EDI is
predictive of academic outcomes several years later. Most instruments do not
specify when they should be used, often because it is not appropriate to do so.
However, the two exceptions were the EDI, which is recommended for completion by
kindergarten teachers in the second half of the school year, and the Early Years
Profile that should be used within seven weeks of the child starting school full time
(Hereford & Worcester Partnership, 1997).
Two of the instruments developed in special schools look specifically at children’s
readiness for reintegration into mainstream schooling. These are the Coping in
School Scale (CISS) (McSherry, 2001; originally called the Reintegration Readiness
Scale in 1996) and the Reintegration Readiness Scale (Doyle, 2002). The first has
general sections: – ‘self management of behaviour’ and ‘self and others’ – and short
sections for specific behaviours: self-awareness, confidence and organisation,
attitude, learning and literacy skills. The instrument can be used to support
reintegration of older primary children before they change to secondary school and
to monitor problems through the transition period. It contains positively phrased
items, is child-centred and was designed for Year 6 children, and occasionally
younger, to complete with adult support. It highlights areas that need addressing,
with the emphasis on self-management and learning, but has few emotional items.
The second is based on the CISS, but is shorter and can be used with 7-11 yearolds.
42
The last instrument is interactive and seeks to identify gaps in emotional
development so that reparative work can improve the deficits. It is therefore intended
for use only in children who have been identified as having emotional or behavioural
difficulties. It was developed as part of the Enable Project (Banks et al., 2001), is
computerised and can be completed by the teacher, parent or child (children are
asked their opinion about statements if too young to complete the whole instrument).
Statements are selected from various topic areas describing predominantly negative
behaviours of subjects. The six most relevant statements are chosen to identify
strategies to repair missing developmental stages for the child on a personal level,
and in the classroom, related to the National Curriculum. This instrument also has
the capacity to be used by adults about themselves. The instrument also has
positively phrased monitoring statements used to follow children’ s progress. These
are currently being adapted for use as a screening tool in schools (Gerlach, personal
communication, February 2003)
5.2 c Measures focusing on emotional competence
We identified two instruments recently developed for use in English schools and
settings which are specifically aimed at assessing emotional competence. One is a
teacher report instrument – the Record of Assessment for Emotional Literacy
Checklist – which covers three aspects of children’s awareness: handling
relationships, managing and knowing own emotions, and recognising emotions in
others. This instrument is being used in Mason Moor Primary School, Southampton
and was developed by the Southampton Emotional Literacy Interest Group. This
group is interested in early years and primary school aged children. The instrument
can be used to assess emotional competence both at the individual and class level.
The second was developed by New Close Primary School (McCalley and Potter,
2002). This one is designed for children aged 10-11 years and the self-report part
includes ‘How I see myself’ where children rate themselves on 11 items and
complete 12 written statements (e.g. today I feel …). Teachers also rate children’s
emotional intelligence, but the children’s items are interpreted as a mixture of social,
emotional and particularly learning outcomes (e.g. capable of counselling other
children who have difficulties and shows empathy; can mediate disputes; generally
optimistic; positive about learning). Scores from both children and teachers are
entered into a matrix. Both of these instruments were developed within the schools
and so none of the statements have been validated, tested or standardised.
The ‘Taking Care Project’ in Sheffield developed an interview-based assessment
which uses scenarios of bullying and domestic conflict to illicit feeling words and help
seeking intentions with 5-11 year-olds. Discussion of these issues is addressed
through school activities such as circle time and expressive drama. There has been
no standardisation or evaluation of which we are aware and so the interpretation of
the children’s responses to these may be at an individual teacher level.
The EQ-i:-YV(S) (Bar-On & Parker, 2000) is a short questionnaire (both 60 item and
30 item versions are available) in which items were derived from the authors clinical
experience, covering various aspects of emotional competence (e.g. it is easy to tell
people how I feel), social competence (e.g. I can tell when one of my close friends is
unhappy), management of emotions (e.g., I get too upset about things) and problem
solving (e.g. I can come up with good answers to hard questions). The EQ-i:-YV is
43
applicable for 7-18 year-olds with a special response sheet for the younger children.
There is a version of this instrument for adults, the EQ-i. The early development of
this instrument is described in a PhD dissertation which we have yet to obtain, but
subsequent development has been well documented in the technical manuals for the
EQ-i and EQ-i:YV. These give details of internal and test-retest reliability tests, factor
analyses, and construct validity. Population norms are also described. The EQ-I:-YV
is suitable for profiling and monitoring and possibly for screening.
The Process-oriented monitoring system (POMS) (Laevers et al., no date) was
developed to assess children’s wellbeing and involvement in class. The instrument
covers developmental and educational areas (e.g. motor, language, understanding).
The well-being assessment covers the quality of children’s relationships with others
and high levels would depend on good emotional and social competence, but the
instrument does not specifically focus on emotional competencies. It has three
stages. The first stage screens the whole class for children with socio-emotional or
developmental problems. This stage has two options for assessment: Variant A has
three levels (low, medium high) on which to assess children and Variant B has five
(1-5 for greater differentiation). Teachers can choose to observe the class on either
variant depending on their level of competence. The manual contains examples of
wellbeing and involvement at each level, together with conclusions, interpretations
and suggestions for interventions. The second stage is a closer observation of
individual children and analysis of their behaviour, with the intention of identifying the
children with low wellbeing scores. Here the child’s wellbeing is assessed in four
domains of social activity (peers, teachers, family and the children’s play-, classand school-world), with more detailed descriptions set into a framework. Again,
instructions, examples of interpretations of wellbeing and involvement are included.
Stage three is setting out the goals for action where the children are assessed in
context, the seriousness of any problem established and the areas which are to be
addressed.
5.2 d Other Instruments
A variety of other instruments were identified including a worksheet called Cogs
(Ball, 2002), with 10 segments for the child to fill in as a form of self-assessment of
areas such as schoolwork, social competence and self knowledge. This is an
approach to measurement which can be carried out as a class exercise. Most of the
items are not relevant to emotional competence.
We identified one instrument which was specifically designed to evaluate a school
emotional literacy intervention. Mary Layton devised a structured interview covering
13 vignettes with coded responses for use in 5-8 year-olds. The instrument is mostly
concerned with social skills but has questions about awareness of others.
We were also told about two potentially relevant instruments, which we have not
been able to find in the timescale of the project. The Optimistic Child scale
(Seligman & Rockwell, 1996) developed in the US, is an assessment for children
aged 8-12 years measuring their explanatory style (optimism vs helplessness). The
Self-Esteem Indicator (Morris, 2001), a brief checklist for Key Stage 1 teachers,
assesses sense of personal power, sense of self and sense of belonging. This
indicates where children need help and is supported by a booklet which suggests
ways of improving self-esteem in children.
44
5.3
Instruments in development identified by contact with researchers and
practitioners
We identified 10 potentially relevant instruments which are currently in development.
Most of these are instruments which we have been told about, but have not yet
seen. We are therefore not in a position to do more that relate what we have been
told about their contents and development. In contrast to those in the previous
sections, all but one of these instruments are being developed in the context of
English schools and settings primarily to assess emotional and social competence.
The first is an instrument, which is based on the work of Professor Laevers (Laevers,
Personal Communication, 2002) at Leuven University, the author of the Leuven
Involvement Scale covered in section 5.2a. He has also developed a resource pack
to improve emotional and social competence, called the Box Full of Feelings. This
provides materials covering the four basic emotions of anger, fear, sadness and
happiness. Professor Laevers is currently overseeing the development of a new
instrument, the Social Competence Test (SCoT), that assesses children’s emotional
and social competences to accompany the Box Full of Feelings. An assessor rates
children’s responses to a set of videoed vignettes. The SCoT measures all aspects of
emotional competence, and is being developed for research purposes. We have not
been able to view the instrument because it is not yet at that stage of development,
but we are told that the instrument assesses the emotional and social responses of
children 4-8 years. Trained researchers show children 12 scenes displayed by
puppets and two fragments of a ‘Mr Bean’ video individually. The videos are stopped
several times following a standardised procedure. Children are asked about the
following: role taking (imagining themselves to be the character depicted in the
scenarios) with respect to feelings and emotions, perceptions and cognitions,
intentions and motives, and their understanding of the observed behaviour, predicting
behaviour and acting in a socially competent way. Children are scored on a four-point
scale based on categorisation of answers where the main focus is on emotions and
their development for the child. The SCoT has been evaluated both in terms of the
quantitative data and in terms of qualitative responses from children, but needs
further reliability studies. It takes 25 minutes to complete and practitioners/teachers
have to be trained to distinguish between different levels of behaviours or responses.
The Accounting Early for Life Long Learning, AcE Project (Pascal & Bertram, 2001)
is being developed at University College, Worcester. The instrument is a practitioner
rating scale detailing the specific observations which practitioners need to make and
record, covering indicators of attitudes, dispositions and emotional wellbeing. The
indicators cover emotional competence (e.g. express and work with own emotions,
empathy, appreciate moral culture); empowerment (e.g. unafraid, confidence to
explore, pride, purposeful); connectedness (e.g. attachment to people, sense of
belonging); positive self-esteem (e.g. demonstrate confidence, respect own beliefs,
resolve conflict, sense of humour, express values). The instrument has been
developed in order to help practitioners improve the learning experience of 3-6 yearolds, and enables the identification of children who need extra support. The latest
version of this instrument is being piloted in the academic year 2002 to 2003. We
have not seen the instrument and so cannot be sure of the emotional competence
content. As described to us it is similar in approach to the Learning Involvement
45
Scale where teachers are trained with videos to standardise the assessment of
children. It appears to have a learning focus.
A further instrument, the Feelings and Empathy Questionnaire (Browning, 2002)
being developed to improve emotional literacy in a primary school, is being
described as part of a Master’s degree nearing completion. The author told us that
the instrument was developed with a small number (<20) of 8-11 year-old children
and has three sections. The first has six shapes where children are invited to write
about ‘what other people think of me’ including friends, siblings, parents, teacher,
head teacher and others. The second ‘developing an emotional vocabulary’, asks
children to write down as many feeling words as they can and then to explain them.
They are then asked to listen to a short story and write down how they would feel
and what would they have done if they were the two characters in the story, which is
designed to assess empathy. Scoring is based on the number of emotional
descriptors in section one and numbers of words listed in section two. In the last
section, empathy or lack of it is scored on a three-point scale.
We have been sent two further instruments whose development is nearing
completion, associated with Bristol University. The first, Talkit (Tew), is being
developed as part of a PhD and includes items relating to emotional and social
competence. It is based on statements children have made about themselves and is
primarily a self report instrument. It has five subscales: controlling emotions, interpersonal empathy, keeping motivated, confidence in different situations and a small
scale for integrity. There are no explicit items on emotional awareness but the first
two subscales include relevant items, (I say what I feel; I notice when other people
are upset; I can say I am sorry when I am wrong; I try to make people feel wanted).
This instrument was developed with 11 year-olds. It will be computerised and
compatible with SIMS (school computer software). It has the potential for profiling
children because self, peers, teachers and parents can complete it. The author is
interested in developing versions for younger and older children. The second
instrument in this group, the Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory (ELLI) Effective
Learning Profile (Broadfoot et al., 2002), assesses attitudes and approaches to
learning (I learn a lot by watching and listening to other people). There are no explicit
questions on emotional or social competence, but the authors consider that these
competencies underpin, and are inseparable from, attitudes and approaches to
learning and that the instrument would therefore identify children who were failing in
this respect. It has been tested with 8-11 year-olds and two older age groups, with a
version for younger children in development (JELLI).
We were told about three approaches to assessing the emotional and social
competence of schools/settings rather than children. The Emotional Literacy Audit,
ELA (of organisational culture) is being developed by Antidote, the UK Campaign for
Emotional Literacy, as a tool to foster emotional literacy in schools. The items in this
instrument are based on interviews and focus groups with children and school staff.
The Graduate School of Education in Bristol is collaborating with the development
work, which is extensive. The ‘What I think about my school’ (Roche, 2002) scale is
a pictorial questionnaire for 7-10 year-olds and was developed as part of an action
research project with four schools in Nottingham. It covers aspects of social
competence and wellbeing at school level. This instrument is being developed as
part of a Healthy Schools initiative, and is open to development. No reliability or
46
validity assessments have been undertaken. An educational psychologist (Priest,
Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council) told us that he has developed an
instrument to enable teachers to reflect on their own emotional competence. This is
based on Goleman’s formulation (Goleman, 1996) of emotional intelligence (selfawareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills) and was designed
to promote discussion.
We were also told about two further instruments (Sefton Council instrument and a
Pre-School Transfer Form in Somerset, Ellis and Jennings, 2002) which are
currently being developed to assess emotional competence as part of projects which
aim to improve behaviour and/or emotional and social wellbeing. We have
insufficient detail about these instruments at present to critically appraise them but
we list them here for completion. The development of these assessments is a
marker of the level of interest in emotional competence assessment in the UK at
present.
47
6.
Discussion and conclusions
In this section we discuss issues associated with emotional competence assessment
in the light of the comments from the interview study and the instruments we
identified. We have found a lot of activity and interest in such assessment. Fifty eight
instruments were identified in different stages of development. We identified several
instruments which cover many aspects of emotional competence which, between
them, could fulfil all the three purposes of early identification, profiling and monitoring,
both in individual children and in schools and settings.
This area of educational activity is new, very active and in a state of flux. The
practitioners, teachers and researchers we spoke to were very interested in
developing methods of assessing emotional competence, but there was not universal
agreement about what the concept entailed. Those we spoke to also expressed
concerns particularly about lack of time for assessment, lack of facilities to help
children with problems, a mistrust of checklist type instruments and concerns about
the uses to which assessment might be put.
During the course of this project we have identified a significant level of interest in the
concept of emotional competence. Some of those we spoke to, however, had
differing ideas about what this concept, and the related concept of social
competence, entailed. Some saw lack of these competences as synonymous with
lack of emotional wellbeing, others with problem behaviour. Some were interested in
the concept primarily because of its relevance to lifelong learning and school
achievement, others because they felt it was important in its own right. An issue for
further debate is the extent to which emotional and social competence encompass
the attribute of autonomy. Many working in the field in the past have implicitly
assumed that social competence, particularly among children, implies an element of
social compliance. Others have suggested that autonomy is important for personal
development and lifelong learning and that it makes a valuable contribution to social
and emotional competence. A considerable number of people responded to our
communications about the assessment of emotional competence, telling us that they
were working on projects which aim to support the development of these
competencies in schools and settings. On further investigation it turned out that some
of these people were working to promote emotional wellbeing or reduce problem
behaviour. There is therefore still some room for clarification about what these
concepts entail.
In looking for instruments which could assess or measure emotional competence, we
found it difficult to separate these instruments from those that measured social
competence because the two concepts are so closely related. However, most early
instruments concentrated on social competence, and it is only recently that
instruments covering emotional competence, as defined in this report, have started to
appear. Some of the instruments which covered emotional as well as social issues
focused on emotional well-being rather than emotional competence. We documented
a considerable interest in assessing and measuring these competences in the
published literature and among researchers working in the UK, Europe and the US.
We also made contact with a number of teachers who were developing their own
instruments for use in their schools or early years settings. Teachers are unlikely to
have the resources at their disposal to be able to evaluate the reliability and validity
48
of instruments they develop, so these are not likely to ‘score’ highly in a review such
as this. It may, however, be worth examining the contents of such instruments again
to achieve a perspective on what teachers think is important.
It is unlikely that we have managed to identify all those who could have made a
contribution to this report, and we have reviewed only the literature that we managed
to identify and obtain in the relatively short time span of the project, but it is clear from
those with whom we did make contact that assessment and measurement of
emotional competence is practical and achievable. Instruments which are currently
available or in development, could in the future make assessment and measurement
for the purposes of early identification, profiling and monitoring a real possibility.
Our review of instruments demonstrated an evolving understanding of social and
emotional development with contributions being made from a variety of different
disciplines. Early instruments were designed by experts and focused on problem
behaviours. By contrast, some later instruments were developed on the basis of
research with parents and children, and included positive social competencies.
Newer instruments enable reporting by multiple observers as well as children
themselves, in recognition that emotional and social competence and behaviour can
be context specific and that children’s perceptions are important. The methods used
for assessment have also evolved, early instruments relying on observer responses
to behavioural items in a checklist. Newer instruments, both those we identified in the
literature and those we identified by contacting researchers, include some based on
observation of children’s emotional and social responses to photographs, drawings or
video vignettes. Many of the more recent instruments are now available in computer
format.
One issue for further consideration is the extent to which children or schools/settings
should be the focus of emotional competence assessment. The environment is key in
supporting the development of these competencies in schools or settings, and
therefore it is possible to argue that the school/setting is the appropriate focus. As
one researcher put it we need to ‘move away from assessing the pathology in the
child to [assessing] the pathology in the system’. The feeling of being judged and
found wanting is a very real deterrent to professional or personal development, and
such an approach might prove counterproductive to initiatives to promote emotional
and social competence.
Almost all those we spoke to believed that early identification of children whose
emotional competence was poorly developed was important. Early identification is an
approach which is best suited for well-defined conditions (those where there is a
clear demarcation between mainstream and special needs) for which there are
effective, available interventions. From a theoretical point of view, therefore,
emotional competence is not an ideal candidate for early identification, but with
careful planning and thought it can be made to work. It is very important, however, if
early identification were to be carried out in all settings, that there would be adequate
facilities to support the children who are identified as in need. This might mean
offering class teachers additional support in managing the children in need in their
class. Early identification would also need to be handled with care since it carries the
risk of negative labelling of children. Completing emotional and social competence
assessments for all children would be less likely to be stigmatising Some of the
49
completed instruments assessing emotional as well as social have been developed
with a screening function in mind and are recommended for this purpose, but more
work needs to be done to demonstrate their usefulness in this context.
In an ideal world all practitioners/teachers would have the time and skills to spot
children with poor emotional and social competence without recourse to instruments,
and the time and ability to offer them the special support they need, both in the
classroom and elsewhere in the school/setting, in a non-stigmatising way, Profiling
instruments can help practitioners/teachers identify children with problems and also
decide on the areas of development which need supporting.
It is useful to note that teachers expressed a distrust of the ‘checklist approach’ to
assessment in their experience checklist results were often not followed up. There
was a very strong feeling that individual children should be allowed to be the best that
they can be, not moulded into a socially compliant being who scores well on a check
list. However, most instruments we identified were checklists. They may be
presented differently e.g. computerised, but the scoring is still a list against which the
respondent is judged. This is inevitable as part of the standardisation process. The
key issue is how the statements against which the children are judged are derived.
Development which includes participants makes for better instruments, and in these
newer instruments children are assessed against statements relevant to them. Self
report instruments although presented as a checklist may be more acceptable.
Instruments which are primarily based on positive statements are also likely to be
more acceptable. The disadvantage of focusing on negative items is that raters
concentrate on the child’s inappropriate or problem behaviours and so assess how
‘bad’ the child is. The child may become aware of teachers or practitioners
attentiveness to this type of behaviour. By contrast, when items are phrased
positively, raters are encouraged to focus on the child’s strengths.
In conclusion we found a lot of activity and interest in the assessment of emotional
and social competence and concluded that assessment is likely to prove feasible in
future. Most of the instruments included in the review focused on social competence,
but we identified several which assess aspects of emotional competence and are
potentially suitable for use in the three contexts screening, profiling and monitoring.
The instruments most relevant to emotional competence assessment were applicable
to school settings rather than early years. Practitioners had strong views about how
assessment might be used. The value of school assessments as part of the
development of whole school approaches were seen as important by some
respondents but were not widely understood by teachers and practitioners.
50
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57
Appendix I Methods Supplement
Data Extraction Sheet for Research Paper
Name of Measure
Contents
Type of measure
Age group
Population
Who completes and
how
Setting(s)
Country
Time to complete
Development
Authors
How developed
Validity
Reliability
When should
children be
assessed?/context?
Samples tested on
Who should
conduct them?
What are the
barriers?:
Significance of
practitioner as the
assessor
Training?
Issues for high-risk
groups?
Views of schools/
practitioners and
parents
Child’s Voice
Purpose and
benefits
Refs for studies
using it
Comments
Suitability for
purpose
Sample
Suitability
Components of
instruments for
table
58
59
Appendix II
Tables of Instruments
Part 1: Instruments identified by literature review
Table 1a: Description of the instruments
Table 1b: Practical application of the instruments
Table 1c: Summary of the instruments
(NB the figures quoted in the tables are from the studies cited and not necessarily
from the original validation studies of instruments.)
Part 2: Instruments identified through contacts
Table 2a: Description of the instruments/materials
Table 2b: Practical application of the instruments
Table 2c: Summary of the instruments
Part 3: Instruments in development
Table 3a: Description of the instruments
Table 3b: Practical application of the instruments
Table 3c: Summary of the instruments
60
1. Instruments identified by literature review
Table 1a: Description of the instruments
(information derived from papers identified)
Instrument
Description
Behavioral and
52 items in 5 factors: 1
Emotional Rating
interpersonal strengths (14
Scale
items) measures child’s ability
BERS
to control emotions or
Epstein et al., 2002
behaviours in social
Epstein 1999
situations; 2 family
Epstein and Sharma involvement (10 items) child’s
1997
participation and relationship
with family; 3 intra-personal
strengths (11 items) child’s
outlook on competence or
accomplishments; 4 school
functioning (9 items)
competence in school; 5
affective strengths (7 items)
ability to give and receive
affection.
Bullying-Behaviour
Scale and Peer
Victim Scale
BBS and PVS
Austin & Joseph,
1996
Two, 6-item self-report scales
to assess bully/victim
problems at school. These
were mixed into Harter’s SelfPerception Profile for Children
(S-PPC). This disguises the
subtlety of measuring bullyvictim issues in the classroom
with instruments that are
specifically about bullying.
Development
Content development was by
random selection of 410 parents
and health professionals from a list
of attendees from a Mental Health
research conference. 250
responded and provided 1200
statements about emotional and
behavioural strengths. These were
reduced to 15 categories, which
were sent to 800 relevant
professionals nationwide resulting
in a list of 127 items. This
preliminary instrument was piloted
and reduced to 80 items. A second
pilot reduced it further to 68 items.
68 items were subjected to factor
analysis, 16 were found to be
redundant and the remaining 52
were re-analysed and 5 factors
resulted.
PVS was developed by Neary and
Joseph in 1994 and matches the
forced choice format of the S-PPC,
with three questions on (negative)
physical and three on verbal victim
attention. These were based on
behaviours identified by Olweus
(1993) in a sample of 12-18 yearolds. PVS was tested with 60 Irish
school girls. BBS added and
repeated with 120 boys and girls in
N Ireland.
61
Reliability
Internal consistency was
very good (alphas for the 5
subscales and overall
strength ranged from 0.79
to 0.99.). Test-retest: (n =
59) correlations all greater
than 0.80 with over half
above 0.90. Results of a
similar magnitude were
found for the inter-rater
reliability tests (n = 96).
Validity
Criterion validity was assessed by
comparing the performance of the
normal children with the
Emotional Behavioural Disorders
children using the BERS. The
expectation was that scores for
each group would be significantly
different. The two groups were
compared in 6 ways and each
test showed significant
differences at the p=0.01 level.
Internal reliability was
satisfactory (PVS alpha=.83
and BBS =.82). Used the NI
study with 120 children to
confirm internal reliability.
PVS and BBS were associated
with low scores on the rest of the
S-PPC. Convergent validity:
compared well with self and peer
reports of bullying. PVS and BBS
compared with the Birleson
Depression Inventory (1981),
both scales associated with
higher scores on BDI.
Instrument
Child Behaviour
Check List
CBCL
(Achenbach, 1991,
Achenbach &
Rescorta, 2001)
Costenbader &
Keller, 1990
Child Behavior
Checklist/1½-5
CBCL/1½-5
Caregiver-Teacher
Report Form
C-TRF
Achenbach &
Rescorta, 2000
Child Behaviour
CheckList –
Teacher’s Report
Form
CBCL-TRF
(Achenbach &
Rescorta, 2001)
Harris et al., 1993
Description
Two sections: behavioural
problems (118 items rated
0=not true, 1 = somewhat or
sometimes true, 2 =very true
often true) and social
competency (20 items)
inventory (child’s participation
in extra-curricular activities,
involvement with friends and
academic performance). 2
global subscales are obtained
for internalising (overcontrolled) and externalising
(under-controlled). 7 Narrow
subscales include aggressive
behaviour, anxious/depressed,
delinquent, social problems,
somatic complaints, thought
problems, withdrawn.
99 problem items plus
descriptions of problems,
disabilities, what concerns
parents most about their child,
and the best things about the
child
Development
This study compared three
groups of children on two scales
(CBCL and Conners Behaviour
Scales for both parents and
teachers). Both scales
differentiated between referred
and non-referred children.
Concluded that both parents and
teachers make a valuable
contribution to assessing children.
Reliability
Details of reliability tests in
manual: good to excellent.
Test-retest = .90
Validity
Details of validity tests in
manual: good to excellent.
In manual.
Manual details extensive data
on standardization, norms,
and reliability.
Manual details validity studies.
http://www.aseba.org/products/
manuals.html
Teacher Report Form similar to
parent report form: Behavioural
items (120) are similar, but
adapted for school setting, uses
same 0-2 rating system. Social
section is referred as adaptive
functioning and assesses the
child’s appropriateness of
behaviour, learning and
happiness.
CBCL used to identify emotional
and behavioural problems in
ordinary primary schools.
There was a high level of
agreement between teachers for
referred and non-referred student
status and subsequent
classification using the CBCL
criteria for psychiatric
disturbance.
Internal consistency for
problem behaviours section
for both CBCL and TRF in
manuals is v high .9+. Testretest reliability from 1 week
to 4 months: .64 to .89. Interrater reliabilities high. CBCL
showed high levels of
sensitivity and specificity.
Broad band scales were sig
correlated with most of the
narrow band scales confirming
the validity of these.
Discriminant validity: nonreferred sig different from
referred on nearly all scales.
62
Instrument
Child Behaviour
Rating Scale
CBRS
Broder et al., 2001
Description
18-item checklist used to rate
adaptive behaviour and social
competency. Uses a 5-point
Likert scale: 1=never to
5=always.
Development
Scale originally developed in
1985, but additional items added
based on interview data from
parents and teachers.
Reliability
Test-retest 18/99 teachers
asked to complete the rating
form again 3 weeks later –
strong relationship.
Child Development
Program (Student
Questionnaire)
CDP
Solomon et al., 2000
Roberts et al 1995
CDP Student Questionnaire
has 38 items and assesses
perceptions of collaborative and
supportive relationships among
students, positive relations
between students and
teachers, closeness and
intimacy, student participation
and influence and ethnic caring.
Attitudinal items use a 5-point
Likert scale and behavioural
items use a 5-point frequency
scale. Teacher version has 15
items and measures
perceptions of collaborative and
supportive relationships among
staff, closeness, teacher
participation and influence and
shared goals and values (uses
a 5-point Likert scale:
1=strongly disagree to
5=strongly agree).
Builds on the work of Battistich
and part of a 4-year investigation
into schools as communities.
Based on observations of
behaviours in the classroom. This
paper aims to describe the school
as a community as perceived by
students and teachers.
Approximately one third of the
questions were phrased
negatively to control for response
set. Nine student items (was 47)
and two teacher items dropped
due to lack of differentiation.
CDP student final measure
had high internal consistency:
alpha .91. and .89 for
teachers.
[CDP covers two
instruments (CDP:
child and teacher)]
63
Validity
Factor analysis conducted and
then confirmatory factor
analysis resulted in 4 factors
(self-maintenance: alpha =.79;
social adaptation: alpha =.66;
independence: alpha =.78; peer
teasing: alpha =.86 (results for
control groups reported here).
The 4 factors and total score
were compared between the
experimental (facial
abnormalities) group and the
controls. Statistically sig diffs
between two groups on total
score and teasing (controls
higher scores)
Construct validity: factor
analysis resulted in 3 factors:
collaboration, helping and
closeness; student influence;
positive interpersonal relations.
Teachers resulted in 2 factors:
collegiality and shared goals
and values; influence and
participation in decision making.
Convergent validity: between
students and teachers was .35
(schools where teachers feel a
strong sense of community are
not necessarily places where
children do. Levels of
commonality (similarities) are
about 15% between schools
and between classrooms within
a school.)
Instrument
Conners’ Teacher
Rating Scale
Revised Short Form
CTRS-28
Fantuzzo et al., 2001
.
Diagnostic Interview
for Social and
Communication
Disorders
DISCO
Wing et al., 2002
Description
Shortened version of the
Conners’ Teacher Rating
Scale. 28 items designed to
assess children from 3-17
years. 3 factors; conduct
problems, hyperactivity and
inattentive/passive probs.
Development
Construct: Miller et al. study mid80s: 400 pre-school, white middle
class children in NY. Exploratory
factor analysis showed CTRS-28
was appropriate for use with preschoolers. However no cross
validation, and used principal
component analysis which inflates
factor loadings with less than 30
items. + no concurrent validity.
Reliability
Teacher version internal
consistency .92,.91 and .89,
for parents .84,.81 and .74.
Performed same statistical
analyses as for PIPPS.
Diagnostic interview for autism.
Systematically obtains
information about child’s clinical
history from birth.
DISCO is a development of the
Autism Diagnostic Interview ADI
developed in 1989 (Rutter and
colleagues: Le Couteur et al.,
1989) which is diagnostic and
provides a health history from
birth. DISCO different: includes
wider range of developmental
domains including self-care,
emotional disturbance and more
Inter-rater study: DISCO 9,
results led to version 10,
currently in use. Each item
was rated numerically. 3
rating scales, based on types
(a-c) of developmental
function: current level of
functioning, concerned delay,
and untypical behaviour.
Type a: steps identified and
64
Validity
Similar to other Fantuzzo
paper. Teacher and Parent
versions of the PIPPS (32
items, see below) were used.
Teachers report play in school
and classroom, parents play at
home and neighbourhood. 3
factors; play interaction,
disruption and disconnection.
Exploratory factor analyses and
then construct validity repeat of
process to check factor
structure in Miller data.
Convergent validity: compared
behaviours reported in home
and school using CRTS-28.
3 factor structure most
appropriate solution: conduct,
hyperactivity and passivity.
Internal consistency .94, .92
and .75. + confirmatory factor
analyses. Showed sig structural
congruence between this and
Miller data. Concurrent: multi
source PIPPS, Q-sort
Convergent and divergent
validity: compared well with
PIPPS
pathological aspects. Items
selected relevant for social
interaction and communication.
Developmental differences in
domains obtained using Vineland
Adaptive Behaviour Scales
(Sparrow et al., 1984). + items
derived from clinical experience
(these domains are main reason
for breadth of DISCO and were
included to obtain understanding
of problems experienced by
children).
Further development for infantile
autism and Asperger syndrome.
Diagnostic Interview
for Social and
Communication
Disorders DISCO
cont.
Dominic-R: A
Pictorial Interview
Valla et al., 2000
Pictorial interview-based
questionnaire designed to
assess mental disorders in 6-11
year-olds. Series of pictures (of
Dominic, who can be male or
female) in varying situations.
Interviewer reads out
statements to elicit replies. 2
booklets (49 and 47 pages, first
has 4 pages of instructions). A
version for African American
children, ‘Terry’, exists..
Diagnoses: simple phobias,
separation anxiety, overanxiouness, depression,
ADHD, and conduct disorders.
Earliest version was in 1981,
developed as short screening tool
and had 26 pictures. By 1994 it
contained 194 drawings and
comprehension of the tool was
tested with 150 primary school
children, drawing by drawing. 2
judges decided if any one drawing
would be retained and the final
instrument was put through the
assessment procedure again.
Questions were added to reduce
any ambiguity in children’s
reactions to the drawings. Also
translated into Spanish, German
and French and there is a
computerised version.
65
ordered chronologically; type
b: marked as delay, minor
delay or no problem; type c
scored twice: never and
current, + severe, minor, not
present. Both interviewers
present at each interview.
Total of 508 ratings and
where there were fewer than
12 children, item was
excluded. Agreement:
Cohen’s Kappa + intra-class
correlation > .75. Inter-rater
analyses: 1 agreement on
which items excluded; 2
agreement on those included.
Agreement overall was 85.2%
for school age and 85.0% for
pre-school.
Test-retest reliability at one
week: coefficients ranged
from .60+ for 21 symptoms
and .50 and .59 for 50
symptoms.
Internal consistency for the 7
mental health diagnoses
ranged from .64 to .83.
Concurrent validity against the
Schedule for Affective
Disorders and Schizophrenia
for School-Age Children,
ranged from .39 to .56.
Instrument
Emotional Instability,
Prosocial Behaviour
and Aggression
Scales
EIPBAS
Caprara & Pastorelli,
1993
FOCAL
Mitchell-Copeland et
al., 1997
FOCAL cont.
Description
Three scales: emotional
instability (EI), prosocial
behaviour (PB) and aggression
(A). Ratings from 4 sources (2
adult and 2 child). EI: 20 items
(scored often=3; sometimes=2;
never=1) capacity to refrain
from impulsivity and
emotionality. PB: 15 items,
same format, denoting altruism,
trust and agreeableness. A: 20
items, same format, behaviours
aimed at hurting others
physically and verbally.
Observational assessment.
Children are observed for 5 min
on 12 occasions. Children’s
emotions and reactions to
peers emotions observed
during free play. Recorded on
computer.
Development
Literature review and based on
theories of control. Authors
identified 3 constructs that make
up the instrument. Peer version
developed from high loading
items from the child version.
Teachers and Parents version,
similar with modified questions.
Reliability
Internal consistency: 3 scales
and for 3 groups of
respondents, consistencies
ranged form 0.97 to .099.
Validity
Concurrent validity: used the
Teacher Report Form and the
Parent Form from the CBCL.
Teachers: EI and A showed a
positive relationship with
external subscale from the
CBCL and PB was negatively
related to internal and external
subscales.
Mothers EI, PB and A were
positively related to internal and
external subscales.
Designed to test the attachment
of young children to their mother
and their teacher. Home visitors
observed mother-child attachment
for a minimum of 2 hours and
observed children in free play at
school. Observers record eventbased emotional interchanges
using a validated naturalistic
coding scheme and data were
collected via computer. The
derived outcome measures form
two scales of social competence:
overall positivity (emotional
displays coded: happy, sad,
angry, afraid, tender, hurt, neutral
and other), the second scale,
reactions to peers emotions,
coded positive reinforcement,
positive, negative and opposite
affect match, helping,
comforting/questioning, looking,
ignoring, sad/hurt feelings, antisocial and negative
FOCAL two-hour video-tapes
watched by researchers.
Composite reliability,
correlating the sorts of all the
observers ranged between
.68 and .89 across 7 motherchild pairs.
FOCAL compared with
Attachment Q-sort and a
teacher rating scale in
development (Social
Competence and Behaviour
Evaluation, SCBE-30). Aim was
not to validate FOCAL but to
see comparisons – results were
not sig different from each
other.
66
Home and
Community Social
Behaviour Scales
HCSBS
Merrell & Calderella,
2003
Merrell 2003
Merrell et al., 2001
Lund & Merrell, 2001
HCSBS is parent version of the
School Social Behaviour Scales
(Merrell, 1993). 2 scales: 32
item social competence scale
and 33 item anti-social scale.
All items are rated using a 5point scale 1=never to
5=frequently.
reinforcement. Overall positivity
was scored thus: relative
frequency of occurrence for each
emotion was calculated by
dividing the number of
observations by the total affects
observed. Reactions to peers was
calculated by sub-tracking Zscores for the relative frequency
of negative reactions from Zscores for the relative frequencies
of positive reactions. Observed
emotions listed in paper.
HCSBS standardised with a
nationally representative
population (ethnically and
geographically diverse) n=1858.
Additional data sources about
children’s behaviours broadens
the scope of the instrument. This
helps overcome one of the
disadvantages of limited sources
(i.e. teacher as only source).
Paper reports high internal
consistency: .96 to .98.
Rating System. Conners Parent
Rating Scale-Revised-Short Form
and Child Behaviour Checklist.
Discriminant validity:
differentiates clearly between
non- and at-risk children.
67
Three separate studies
focusing on convergent and
discriminant validity evidence
for the HCSBS in comparison
with four scales: the Social Skills
HCSBS Scale A, Social
Competence: evidenced: strong
positive correlations - social
skills and adaptability, strong
negative correlations externalising behaviour
problems, modest negative
correlations - internalising and
atypical behaviour problems.
HCSBS Scale B. Antisocial
Behaviour: evidenced strong
positive correlations externalising behaviour
problems, modest positive
correlations - internalising and
atypical behaviour problems
and strong negative
correlations - social skills and
adaptability.
Instrument
Infant and Toddler
Social and Emotional
Assessment
ITSEA
Briggs-Gowan &
Carter, 1998
Carter et al,1999
Description
Designed to assess multiple
dimensions of social and
emotional competence. 2
versions: 1. 140 items for
research use, 2. 60 items as a
screener. Not designed as a
stand alone instrument. Rated
on following scale 0=not
true/rarely, 1=somewhat
true/sometimes, 2=very
true/often.
Development
Developed with 214 parents (SES
diverse). Recruited via a
paediatric clinic. Piloted with small
sample – no. not given. Parents
found it very acceptable to
complete. Items based on
literature, clinical observations,
existing checklists. + 15 experts
reviewed an initial pool of 200
items for content validity and age
appropriateness.
Reliability
Results for long version.
Test-retest study: 34 parents
selected at random, 29
completed ITSEA twice, at 2
weeks and at one year.
(n=70) as part of the follow up
(results not given).
Internal reliability good alphas
– those scales less than 0.7
resulted in further
development. 2 week re-test
intra-class coefficient good
.75 to .91, less good at one
year .67 to .24.
Interpersonal
Competence Scale
ICS-T
Cairns et al., 1995
Rating scales. 18-items
assessing social and
behavioural characteristics of
children and youths. Three
factors: AGG (argues, fights),
POP (popularity) and ACA
(spelling, maths). Three
subsidiary factors AFF (smile
friendly), OLY (appearance,
wins/achieves) and INT
(shyness, worry). Uses a 7point scale for each item. In use
for 10 years.
Observations of coded
behaviours form.
Construction: reviewed literature
for domains and tested them with
350 3rd and 4th grade students.
Further analyses conducted with
695 children, 220 4th grade and
475 7th grade. This was part of
the Carolina Longitudinal Study
and so authors were able to
follow children who had
completed the ICS into
adolescence.
Test-retest: short term 3
weeks, 58, 4th grade children
+ 7th grade study: median for
scales was r = .89. Long term
1 year, median for scales was
r = .42.
Inter-rater: ranged from .80 to
.88.
Head Start teachers and parents
were involved in the development
of instrument – enhance
sensitivity to classroom and
cultural variables as working with
an African American population .
Specific tactics children use to
effect immediate sustainable play
– ie play repertoires that children
routinely displayed in free-play
Inter-rater reliabilities: for 100
children, 20 teachers
compared with teaching
assistants - .88 P<.001.
Alpha’s for 3 factors
(.9,.89,.9).
Penn Interactive
Peer Play Scale
PIPPS
Fantuzzo et al., 1995
68
Validity
ITSEA compared with three
other measures (CBCL2/3,
PSI/SF and CCTI-9) all these
instruments have strong
internal validity and good testretest reliability. ITSEA
externalising and internalising
scales were sig correlated (.48
to .62 P<0.01). Confirmatory
factor analysis – 9 problem
scales and 7 competence
scales. Needs larger sample to
examine broad band effects
e.g. externalising and
internalising factors.
Factor analysis: AGG, POP and
ACA emerged as distinct
factors. Alphas were AGG: .81;
POP: .71, ACA: .71, AFF: .67,
OLY: .84. Robust
developmental validity. It
provides robust assessments of
current behaviours and reliable
predictions of future ones
Factor analyses – 3 factors:
disruption, disconnection and
peer interactions.
Disruption (aggression, antisocial behaviours)
Disconnection (nonparticipation, hovering,
withdrawing, wandering and
being ignored). Peer interaction
(sharing ideas, leading, helping
Penn Interactive
Peer Play Scale
PIPPS cont.
Penn State Worry
Questionnaire for
Children
PSWQ-C
Chorpita et al., 1997
PSWQ-C is an adaptation of
the PSWQ: changed wording
and reduced Likert scale
options to 4. 14 Items scored
from 0 to 3, giving a total score
between 0 and 42, with higher
scores indicating higher degree
of worry.
Preschool Behaviour
Checklist
PBCL
McGuire & Richman,
1988
St James-Roberts et
al., 1994
22 items, standardised for 2-5
year-olds. Includes four main
areas of behaviour: conduct
problems, emotional difficulties,
social relations and
concentration. Each area has
3-4 items, which are scored
0=absence of problem,
1=possible problem 2=definite
problem.
periods.
800 Head Start children were
videoed, parents, researcher and
teachers studied the highest 25
and lowest 25 ‘play active’
children – identify most salient
behaviours that would distinguish
high and low players. Adept
players showed affective
characteristics (active, animated
and happy) less adept were
disruptive, aggressive and easily
frustrated or disconnected, quiet
and withdrawn. Resulted in 36
Likert format scale items.
Exploratory factor analysis:
principal factor analysis yielded
one factor. Two items loaded
weakly and were dropped.
Internal consistency: alpha = .89
for 14 items and was .81 for the
6-11 age group.
Two studies using slightly
different procedures, to consider
whether findings in one group of
children and teachers were
replicated in another. Factor
structure: found 6 with a strong
first factor of conduct/aggression,
then social withdrawal, and
emotional/sensitivity. Factors 4-6
were less clear and were different
in the two studies. They suggest a
cut-off score of 10 (McGuire and
Richman suggested 12).
69
others and encouraging others
to play) – lists in paper.
Cross validation with random
sub-samples: assessed degree
of congruence .98. Checked to
see items migrated but no item
migrated confirming structure.
Convergent and divergent
validity: SSRS used 2 scales:
social skills (pro-social
behaviours rated according to
frequency) and problem
behaviour (frequency checklist).
Found expected patterns.
Found moderate to good fit
for 1 factor solution for both
genders and older age group,
but Grade 1 dropped from
younger age group as a
formal worry process was
considered not to be evident
at this age.
Internal consistency: alpha
.83. Test retest after two
weeks: .88. Inter-rater
reliability: 83%.
PBCL's factoral structure
confirms that, in the reception
class context, it measures
emotional and behavioural
variables in children as these
are observed by teachers.
Findings very similar to
McGuire and Richman.
Convergent validity: compared
PSWQ-C with Children’s
Depression Inventory and the
Revised Children’s Manifest
Anxiety Scale: found sig
correlations with the expected
outcomes, particularly CDI as
this assesses negative affect
rather than depression.
Construct validity found six
factors. Convergent validity
compared with the Preschool
Behaviour checklist was .89.
Two studies resulted in similar
factor structures for three of the
factors but remaining factors
were more variable.
Instrument
Separation and
Anxiety Test
SAT
Duffy and Fell, 1999,
Wright et al., 1995
Description
Interview with photographs. It
assumes that responses to the
fictitious situations in
photographs will be analogous
to responses to real situations.
Three subscales: attachment,
self-reliance and avoidance.
Examples of questions given.
Social Phobia and
Anxiety Inventory for
Children
SPAI-C
Beidel et al., 1995
Inventory is a self-completion
instrument with 26 items, 18 of
which are multiple answer.
These rated on a 3 point scale:
0=never or hardly ever,
1=sometimes, 2=almost always
or always. Scores are out of 52.
Development
Based on Attachment Theory.
SAT extended and validated by
Wright et al 1995 and assesses
responses of children to
imaginary separation from
parents. Needs training to
interpret data – researchers
showed high levels of agreement
for category labels, over 90% for
three scales. Complicated and
time-consuming scoring system.
SAT identified differences
between ‘self’ and ‘other’
responses on attachment and
avoidance scales but not selfreliance.
Items generated empirically and
subjected to a two stage
construction strategy. Items came
from 1. clinical interviews with 20
socially phobic children (mean
age 10.6 years); 2. daily diaries of
these children were reviewed; 3.
items found in the adult version of
the SPAI were reviewed. These
items were reviewed by 6 experts
and the initial version contained
32 items. Item reduction phase:
20 different phobic children and
33 normal children – 6 items were
dropped from the inventory
because they did not differentiate
between the children, hence 26
items. This version tested again in
a phobic population. Also tested
inventory for normative data.
Combined studies: 52 phobic
children and 48 normal.
70
Reliability
1. Test-retest was positive but
low across all scales
indicating a lack of stability of
responses over time.
Inter-rater reliability high.
2. Inter-rater was acceptable
(67% – 89%). Test-retest only
conducted with clinical
sample. Internal consistency
was acceptable (alphas ~.70).
Validity
1. Discriminant validity: SAT
differentiates between clinical
and non-clinical subjects for
emotional disturbance.
2. Similar findings.
154 children (70 phobic
interviewed as before, 33
normal) Children completed
the State Trait Anxiety IC and
FSSC-R; parents completed
the CBCL. This study was
used for the reliability and
validity tests.
High test-retest reliability
based on interviews using the
Anxiety Disorders Interview
Schedule for children.
Alpha=.95. Two weeks after
initial questionnaire, 62/154
completed the SPAI-C again:
r =.86 P<.001. Also good at
10 months. Scale reliable for
children as young as 8 years.
Kappa: diagnostic
classification social phobia
was .87 and .83 for
overanxious disorder.
Concurrent and external validity
showed statistically sig
correlations with other selfreport measures of general
anxiety.
Factor analysis: 154 children
used best fit solution and
retained items with factor
loadings greater than .45.
Identified 3 factors;
assertiveness/general
conversation, traditional social
encounters and public
performance. Normal sig dif on
all 3 factors.
38/154 r =.5 P<.001
SPAI-C compared with CBCL
74/154, got good correlations in
the expected pattern e.g.
inverse relationship between
anxiety and social competence.
Instrument
School Social
Behaviour Scales
SSBS
Merrell, 1993
Emerson et al., 1994
Merrell 2003
Description
Teachers rate children on a 1-5
scale for each item in each
subscale. Scale total scores
then converted into a standard
score and percentile ranks
(from normative scores in the
manual) + raw scores from
each subscale can be
converted to normative social
functioning levels.
Social Ability
Braza et al., 1993
Observation of 2 indices:
amplitude of behaviour and
amplitude of partnership.
Children scored on on the
basis of diversity of social
contacts and behaviour.
Development
Developed to capture strength
and sophistication of problem
behaviours, but with more accent
on social competence than the
Teacher Rating Form. + made
more user friendly than previous
scales. Half the length of TRF and
specific to school settings.
Designed for K – 12 two scales:
social competence (interpersonal
skills, self-management skills,
academic skills) and anti social
behaviour (hostile-irritable, antisocial-aggressive, demandingdisruptive). 1858 students grades
K – 12 from 22 school districts
(range of SES, urban/rural, ethnic
etc.) (ethnicity not major influence
on behaviour but gender is, girls
found to be more socially
competent).
Children were videoed twice a
week for 30 minutes of free-play
and were unaware of observers.
Used Shannon’s Index to assess
the relative frequency of time that
each individual spent with
different peers and to assess the
time devoted to different social
behaviours. 22 social patterns
were observed and were grouped
into 8 variables based on
motivation.
71
Reliability
1. Reliability high: alphas: .94
to .98 for 2 summed scales
and 6 sub-scales. Test-retest:
.6 to .83 for same 8 scales.
Inter-rater: .53 to .83
(weakest on anti-social
behaviours).
2. Internal consistent
reliability high: .88 for antisocial behaviour and .91 for
social competence. Results
for this sample similar to
manual.
Validity
1. SSBS compared with four
other validated measures:
content, construct and
discriminant validity all high.
2. Subscale correlations high:
SC r=.78 to .84; AB r=.77 to
.84. Compared SSBS with
CBCL and TRF and CBCL.
Found expected patterns of
results: high r=.73 between
SSBS total social competence
and TRF adaptive functioning
etc. Authors felt the convergent
validity good enough to support
use of SSBS to assess social
behaviour in the school setting.
Inter-observer reliability:
89.7%.
Factor analysis: revealed a 4
factor solution: ‘prosocial’,
‘agonistic’, ‘assertiveness’ and
‘prohierachy’ (acknowledging
hierarchies/rules). Both the
indexes of amplitude of
partnership and the amplitude
of behaviour showed a
significant dependence with 4
factors taken as independent
variables.
Instrument
Social Skills Rating
Scale
SSRS-T
Gresham & Elliot,
1990
Elliot et al., 1993
Social Skills Rating
Scale – Teacher
Version
Lyon, 1996
[SSRS cover two
instruments: teacher
and parent]
Strengths and
Difficulties
Questionnaire
SDQ
Goodman, 1997
Goodman 1994
Description
3 major scales : social skills,
problem behaviours (both 3point Likert scales) and
academic competence (5-point
Likert scale). For preschoolers:
40 items (30 prosocial and 10
problem behaviour). Parent
form 2 major scales (social
skills and problem behaviours)
and has 55 items on four social
skills: co-operation, assertion,
self-control and responsibility.
Student version for high school.
Development
Norm referenced and nationally
standardised cross-informant
rating scale. Includes a brief
problem behaviour screening
scale.
Reliability
Reliability reported as
adequate to excellent.
Validity
Validity reported as adequate to
excellent.
Internal consistency for
preschool: for all scales it
ranged from .79 to .83.
Test-retest: all scales .84 to
.93.
No extra details for
preschoolers
SDQ is a brief questionnaire of
social behaviours completed by
teachers and parents with a
similar version for self-report,
for 3-16 year-olds. Five
dimensions: conduct problems,
emotional symptoms,
hyperactivity, peer relations and
pro-social behaviour with five
items in each. 3-point rating
scale: not true = 0, somewhat
true = 1, certainly true = 2.
Scores 0-40 for difficulties and
0-10 for strengths.
Extra items added to the Rutter
Health and Behaviour Checklist
and factor analysis to guide
development. The SDQ has two
scales (peer problems and prosocial behaviour) in addition to
the Rutter.
Reliability was generally
satisfactory (mean coefficient
a: .73), inter-rater reliability
(mean: 0.34), or retest
stability after 4 to 6 months
(mean: 0.62). Used receiver
operating characteristic ROC
curves to distinguish between
high and low risk samples.
The predicted five-factor
structure (emotional, conduct,
hyperactivity-inattention, peer,
prosocial) was confirmed.
Internalising and externalising
scales were relatively
‘uncontaminated’ by one
another. SDQ compared with
Rutter’s questionnaires for
parents and teachers. Very
good concurrent validity. ROC
analyses showed good
predictive validity for both
measures as they could
distinguish between the two
samples.
72
Table 1b: Practical application of the instruments
(these applications were indicated in the papers, instruments may have other applications not covered by research papers accessed)
Instrument
Behavioral and Emotional
Rating Scale
BERS
Epstein et al., 2002
Bullying-Behaviour Scale
and Peer Victim Scale,
BBS and PVS
Austin & Joseph, 1996
Child Behaviour Check List
CBCL
(Achenbach, 1991;
Achenbach & Rescorta,
2001)
Costenbader &Keller, 1990
Child Behavior
Checklist/1½-5
CBCL/1½-5
Caregiver-Teacher Report
Form
C-TRF
Achenbach & Rescorta,
2000
Child behaviour check list –
Teacher’s Report Form
CBCL-TRF
(Achenbach, 1991;
Achenbach & Rescorta,
2001)
Harris et al. 1993
Child Behaviour Rating
Scale
CBRS
Broder et al., 2001
Type
Rating scale
Age group
5-18 years
Who completes & Time
Teachers, parents
Setting
School
Population in paper
US, 2,176 normative group and 861
EBD children, from 32 states.
Questionnaire
8-11 years
Children, but not told about the
bullying and victim aspects
Classroom
UK, 425 (204 boys) general
population from Merseyside
Rating scale
6-18 years
Parents
~20 mins
Home
1991: US 2,368 nationally
representative, non-referred children.
2001: 1,753 nationally representative,
non-referred children.
US 80 non-referred children
Rating scale
1.5-5 years
Teachers, caregivers
School,
nursery
US 1,728 children
US 1,113 children
Rating scale
5-11 years
Teachers
~20 mins
School
1991: US 1,391 students
2001: 2,319 students
UK 183 non-referred (39 girls)
children
Rating scale
5-18 years
Teachers
School
73
US, K – Grade 12. 99 with facial
abnormalities and 99 controls
Instrument
Child Development
Program (Student
Questionnaire)
CDP, Solomon et al., 2000
Type
Questionnaire
Age group
8-12 years
Who completes & Time
Children and teachers
Setting
School
Population in paper
US, 4000+ children from 24
elementary schools in 6 different
school districts across the US (and
550 teachers). Normative sample,
heterogeneous for ethnicity and SES.
Conners’ Teacher Rating
Scale Revised Short Form
CTRS-28
Fantuzzo et al. 2001
Diagnostic Interview for
Social and Communication
Disorders
DISCO
Wing et al., 2002
Rating scale
3.5 to 5.5
years
Teachers
School
Semi-structured
Interview with
parents
(clinician
designed)
3-11 years
Home (for
school age)
University
of Kent (for
pre-school)
Dominic-R: A Pictorial
Interview
Valla et al., 2000
Emotional Instability,
Prosocial Behaviour and
Aggression Scales
Caprara & Pastorelli, 1993
FOCAL
Mitchell-Copeland et al.,
1997
Drawings with
interview-based
questions
Rating scales
6-11 years
Non-clinical researchers (+ 3
months training - described),
systematic interview (interviewer
makes judgments for rating each
item. Instructions supplied but not
wording – depends on family)
Parents encouraged to bring
photos, videos to interview –
development. Interview info
supplemented with teachers info,
with any discrepancies in rating
checked and observations.
3 hours
Trained lay interviewers (training
takes 2-3 hours)
15-25 minutes
Self-report, teacher, mother and
peer nomination
US, 580 low-income, urban, African
American children from the Head Start
programme.
51% male
UK, 82 children: 50 school age [80 to
140 mo]; 32 pre-school [34 to 67 mo]
across autistic spectrum [18 high
functioning; 18 low; 17 learning
disabilities; 13 specific language
difficulties; 15 typical development.]
recruitment: clinics and special
schools typicals from local schools
(SE UK)
Observational
measure
Pre-school
Researchers
Nursery
7-10 years
74
School
Home
school
Canada, 340 school lower-middle
class children from 4 schools aged 611.
Italy, 390 children (214 boys) age 710; 20 teachers. 291 mothers, and
390 peers (same children).
US, 62 (31 boys) ages 34 to 56
months (mean 4.45 months)
heterogeneous for ethnicity and SES.
Instrument
Home and Community
Social Behaviour Scales
HCSBS
Merrell & Calderella, 2003
Merrell et al., 2001
Lund & Merrell, 2001
Type
Rating scale
Age group
5-18 years
Who completes & Time
Parents and caretakers
Setting
Home
Population in paper
US, 3 Studies: 1: grades 6 and 7,
n=127 (12 with learning difficulties).
2: grades 2 to 5, n=60 normal
population.
3: 206 in-patient youths.
Infant and Toddler Social
and Emotional Assessment
ITSEA
Briggs-Gowan & Carter,
1998
Carter 1999
Interpersonal Competence
Scale
ICS-T
Cairns et al., 1995
Penn Interactive Peer Play
Scale
PIPPS
Fantuzzo et al. 1995
Pen State Worry
Questionnaire for Children
PSWQ-C,
Chorpita et al., 1997
Questionnaire
1–3 years
Parents
40 +/-20 min
Home
Rating scale
8 years to
adolescence
Teachers, parents
2-4 min
School,
home
US, 214, (102 girls) 1-3years SES
diverse pop. (214/345 – no diffs
between parents taking part and those
refusing). ITSEA compared with
observations in a separate study with
1 year-olds.
US, 4th and 7th grade children, general
suburban middle class
Observational
rating scale
3-5 years
Teachers
Classroom
US, 312, African American children
enrolled in Head Start – low income.
145 males
Self-report
6-18 years
Children
Classroom
US, 199 children general population
(109 girls)
Preschool Behaviour
Checklist PBCL
McGuire and Richman,
1988
James-Roberts et al., 1994
Separation and Anxiety
Test
SAT
Duffy & Fell, 1999,
Wright et al., 1995
Rating scale
2-5 years
Teachers
Nursery
UK, 23 teachers and 516 children and
35 teachers and 350 children
Interview with
photographs
8-12 years
Children
School
1. Ireland 13 non-clinical children (5
males).
2. England 21 non-clinical children
75
Instrument
Social Phobia and Anxiety
Inventory for Children
SPAI-C
Beidel et al., 1995
School Social Behaviour
Scales
SSBS
Merrell, 1993
Emerson et al., 1994
Social Ability
Braza et al., 1993
Type
Rating scale
Age group
8-15 years,
Who completes & Time
Children
Setting
School
Population in paper
US, Normal controls were 67% male
mean age 10.1
Rating scale
Grades K12
Teachers, counsellors, school
psychologists
7-9 mins
School
1. US, 1,858 general population, with
ethnic and SES heterogeneity.
2. US, 210, non-referred children
(51.9% male)
Videoed
observations
5 years
Researchers
School
Spain, 27 (20 girls) one group of preschool children from a grammar
school.
Social Skills Rating Scale
SSRS
Elliot et al., 1993
Social Skills Rating Scale –
Teacher Version
Lyon et al, 1996
Rating scales
5-18 years
Teachers, parents, students
20 min
School,
home
US, 4,170 grades 3-10, normative
sample
Preschool
children
Teachers
School
Strengths and Difficulties
Questionnaire
SDQ
Goodman, 1997
Rating scale
4-16 years
Researchers, clinicians and
educationalists, parents, child
School,
clinic,
home
US, 49, (23 girls) aged 3-5 years from
lower-middle to upper-middle socioeconomic groupings. 27 were nondisabled.
UK nationwide epidemiological
sample of 10,438 British 5-15 yearolds obtained SDQs from 96% of
parents, 70% of teachers, and 91% of
11-15 year-olds. 403 children from
either a psychiatric or dental clinic
(n=158) in London
76
2. Instruments identified through contacts
Table 2a: Description of the instruments/materials
Instrument
Adaptive Social
Behaviour
Inventory
Hogan et al., 1992
Boxall profile
Bennathan &
Boxall, 1998
Cogs
Ball, 2002
Coping in School
Scale
CISS
McSherry, 2001
Description
Teacher rating scale. 30 items
with each item score as rarely
or never, sometimes or almost
always. Three scales: Express (13
items); Comply (10) and Disrupt (7).
Measures cooperation/ conformity,
peer sociability, anti-social or upset
behaviour.
A guide to effective intervention
in the education of children with
emotional and behavioural
difficulties.
2 sections: developmental
strands section and the
diagnostic profile.
Page of drawn cogs for child to
fill in, scoring 10 concepts for or
from? self-assessment (each
cog can score up to 10). Class
exercise.
Tool to assess readiness for
reintegration into mainstream
schooling. 2 versions: 2 long (8
sections) for teachers: self
management of behaviour and
self and others and short (5
sections) for specific
behaviours: self awareness,
confidence and organisation,
attitude, learning and literacy
skills. Scores are ratings from
Development
Developed on the basis of a review of items in
instruments by child development specialists.
Piloted with mothers who were interviewed.
Users
Professor Kathy Sylva,
EPPE Project, Institute
of Education
Reliability & Validity
Horgan et al., 1992 waiting
for paper.
Diagnostic developmental profile and
identification of needs. Structured observation
in the classroom developed for teachers and
classroom assistants in Inner London.
Developed as part of a nurture group
approach to assess need, plan intervention
and measure progress. Observations from
children over time, with deviant behaviours
brought together in 8 sets. ILEA Research
and Statistics Branch reviewed the profile and
some items were modified.
No details
Tracey Sanders
Hampshire County
Council
Colin Gordon,
Southend on Sea
Borough Council
Evaluation by ILEA Research
and Statistics Branch.
New Manton Primary
School, Worksop
No details
Developed at the Institute of Education as a
PhD. Items were developed through own
experience and suggestions from EBD and
main school teachers in a two phase process.
Piloted in Sutton. Reintegration Readiness
Scale developed into the CISS. 4 groups of
pupils from EBD schools.
Used In Wandsworth as
a reintegration and
inclusion tool for 3
years. Used in primary
school at transition to
secondary school. Also
used in other London
authorities, Oxford,
Croydon and Kent.
Validation study showed
significant differences
between EBD children and
mainstream children.
77
1-4: 1=never to 4=almost
always able to fulfil this
criterion.
Instrument
Devereux Early
Childhood
Assessment
Programme
DECA
LeBuffe & Naglieri,
1998
Description
Programme to support early
social and emotional health.
Technical manual, user’s guide,
parent’s guide, classroom guide
and observational journal.
Assesses social and emotional
competence using a 37 item
checklist with each item scored
on a 5-point scale: 0=never to
4=very frequently. There are 4
subscales: initiative, selfcontrol, attachment and
behaviour concerns. Same
versions for teachers and
parents.
Development
Developed by the Devereux Foundation as
part of a series of school assessment
instruments. Assesses children in early years
to prevent emotional and behavioural
disorders by assessing their resilience and
gauging protective factors.
DECA was developed over a 2 year period.
Factor analysis resulted in scales that were in
keeping with research on protective factors: 3
protective factor scales: initiative, self-control
and attachment, + behavioural concerns.
Early Development
Instrument
EDI
Offord & Janus,
2001
A population based measure for
communities. Assesses
readiness to learn. Teacher
rating scale with multiple
answer and short questions. 5
domains: physical health, social
competence, emotional health,
cognitive development and
communication skills.
Profile completed on entry to
full time education and is
intended to reflect child’s
attitudes, attributes and
understanding. 30 items each
addressed individually against
Developed in conjunction with practitioners
and the Early Years Action Group and the
Parenting and Literacy Centres in Toronto.
Early Years Profile,
Hereford &
Worcester
Partnership, 1997
Used during the 90s in most H&W schools.
Revised in 1990, 1995 and 1997 to balance
needs of assessment and recording and the
National Curriculum. (development via
working party and Wolverhampton University)
78
Users
Internal consistency for
each scale of the
protective scales was
>0.8. The behavioural
concern scale was
lower but reflecting the
heterogeneity of the
scale.
Test-retest: over 24
hour period: teacher
reliabilities for
protective factors
ranged .87 to .94 and
parents ranged from
.55 to .80.
Inter-rater reliability
between teachers for
the protective factors
range .59 to .77.
Widely used in Canada
Reliability & Validity
Criterion validity: predict if
child was part of a clinical or
non-referred sample. 69%
were correctly classified.
Construct validity was
explored by comparing the
protective factor scales with
the behavioural concerns
scale. Overall relationship
was -.65, i.e. protective
factors and problem
behaviours are inversely
related.
Hereford & Worcester
Development has been
iterative therefore no formal
reliability and validity studies.
Inferred validity through
revisions.
Validity studies conducted
and instrument found to be
very satisfactory, with more
studies in progress to ensure
instrument retains its validity.
the manual criteria. Profile filled
in using a colour code.
Instrument
Emotional
Behaviour Scale,
EBS
Clarbour & Roger,
in press
Description
Assess adolescent emotional
coping strategies. 65 item selfreport questionnaire. 3
subscales: social anxiety,
malevolent aggression and
social self-esteem.
Development
Based on the emotional control model of one
of the authors (Roger). Item construction was
developed by asking for reactions from Year 7
pupils to a range of situations. They were
asked how they would feel and how they
thought others would feel. Exploratory factor
analysis was conducted and failing items
were rejected.
Users
Jill Pattenden,
Jane Clarbour,
University of York
Emotional and
Behavioural
Development
Scales,
EBDS
Riding et al., 2002
Brief checklist of 3 areas of
emotional and development
behaviours. 3 scales of 5 items
rated on a 6-point scale 0=not
at all to 5=always.
Birmingham University,
Assessment Research
Unit, School of
Education.
Emotional Quotient
Inventory- Youth
version (S)
EQ-I:YV(S)
Bar-On & Parker,
2000
30-item questionnaire mostly
about emotional competence.
Scored on a 4-point scale: 1 =
not true of me to 4 = very much
true of me. Short form takes 15
min. 5 scales: intrapersonal,
interpersonal, adaptability,
stress and total EQ.
Computer based. Reporter
(teacher, parent or child)
chooses statements that fit the
behaviours of subject from a
selection of topic areas. Then
chooses 6 most relevant
statements. Software identifies
Survey of Principle Educational Psychologists
and personnel in LEAs working in the EBD
area. List of 250 emotional and behavioural
descriptors was produced. These were
grouped to give 21 items describing
observable behaviours. The scales went
through three revisions resulting a final
version with 15 items.
Series of questionnaires measuring emotional
intelligence. Adult, youth and child versions.
Data were collected from 4 age groups 7-9
(n= 2601) and 10-12 (n=3144) years and two
older groups. Development details are in a
doctoral dissertation.
Developed over a 10 year period in
consultation with teachers and theory-based.
Much of recent development has been in
collaboration with Christchurch College
Canterbury. Software identifies earliest stage
of development at which subject has ‘missed
out’ and suggests ways of repairing the gap in
Julia Bird, and three
others (two ex-social
workers and another
ex-teacher; now all
psycho-therapists)
Enable
Banks et al., 2001
79
Geetu Orme is the
director of Ei UK and
the home website is
www.mhs.org.
Reliability & Validity
Internal reliability coefficients
ranged from .76 to .90.
Validated in school children
(11-14 years) and prison
populations. Concurrent
validity with Harter’s SPP-C
and Goodman’s SDQ, which
provided confirmatory
evidence for predictive value
of EBS. Factor analysis
yielded 3 factors
Factor analysis resulted in 3
factors: conduct, learning and
emotional behaviour.
Reliabilities: internal
consistencies: 0.65 to 0.81
(7-9 years); test-retest: 0.87.
Well validated: factorial and
construct. Part of a series of
assessment instruments for
measuring emotional
quotient.
Development has been
iterative therefore no formal
reliability and validity studies.
Inferred validity through
revisions. An external
evaluation (funded by the DH)
is planned for 6 UK settings.
Instrument
Fast Track
Greenberg et al.
Leuven
Involvement Scale
for Young Children
LIS-YC
Laevers, 1994
strategies to repair missing
developmental stages for child
on personal level, in classroom
and related to the Curriculum.
a manner that maintains the subject’s dignity.
Instrument has evolved - responding to needs
of teachers i.e. from a need to address
negative behaviours to positive screening.
Description
Fast Track has potential and is
a multifaceted series of
measures including child
interview, parent and teacher
rating scales. It is a
comprehensive, multi-site
intervention designed to
prevent serious and chronic
antisocial behaviour in a
sample of children selected as
high-risk at school entry
because of their conduct
problems in kindergarten and
home. The intervention is
guided by a developmental
theory positing the interaction of
multiple influences on the
development of antisocial
behaviour.
The scale assesses levels of
involvement in learning. Two
components: list of signals and
5 scale rates. Assessors have
to be trained and so the manual
also has a video that trains
teachers to rate involvement on
a scale from 1=no activity to
5=sustained intense activity.
Individuals and classes can be
assessed. Versions exist for
other age groups including
adults.
Development
All development details at
http://www.fasttrackproject.org
Developmental model targeted at transitions
at school entry and from elementary to middle
school. The most intense phase of
intervention took place in the first grade year
for each of three successive cohorts. The six
components of the first grade intervention
include:
1. teacher-led classroom curricula (called
PATHS) as a universal intervention directed
toward the development of emotional
concepts, social understanding, and selfcontrol; 2. parent training groups designed to
promote the development of positive familyschool relationships; 3. home visits; 4.child
social skill training groups; 5. child tutoring in
reading; and 6. child friendship enhancement
in the classroom.
Underpinned by the theory of Experiential
Education EXE. Action research revealed two
indicators: emotional well being and
involvement. The involvement scale is a
process-oriented monitoring system (focuses
on wellbeing and involvement). An instrument
to let children from 5-12 map their own levels
of wellbeing and involvement at school (in
general and for up to 21 subject area’s).
Includes action points to improve the
environment. Also developed the SelfMonitoring System for trainee teachers.
80
Users
Mark Greenberg
Penn State University.
Peter Appleton,
Cambridge and
Peterborough NHSS
considering using Fast
Track in future.
In use since 1993,
English, French,
German and Spanish
versions.
Reliability & Validity
Series of technical reports
about the development of all
the instruments.
Those who completed these
assessments were included
in the total sample based on
the school that they entered
for first grade. In this way
three successive cohorts
(yearly) were recruited to
yield a total of 440
intervention and 440 control
children.
Reliability: inter-rater
reliability was .9. Test retest
showed that level of
involvement was a relatively
stable characteristic and is an
interaction of the context
(how the teacher handles the
group) and the characteristics
of the children.
Instrument
Mary Layton MA,
1996
Description
Structured interview: 13
vignettes that have a coded
response (assertive = 3,
passive constructive =2 passive
unconstructive = 1, aggressive
= 0) + 8 pictures (e.g. child
fallen over in playground) with
coded responses – again 3 to
0, positive to negative.
New Close Primary
School Project
McCalley & Potter,
2002
Check list for teachers and
children on emotional
intelligence. The self
assessment part consists of 2
components: How I see myself.
Children rank themselves
(1=never to 4=always) on 11
statements; and 12 written
statements that children
complete (e.g. today I feel …)
The Optimistic
Child
Seligman &
Rockwell, 1996
Process-oriented
Child Monitoring
System
POMS
Laevers et al., no
date
An assessment for children
(ages 8-12). It measures the
children’s explanatory style
(optimism vs helplessness).
Three stages: 1 class screening
(socio-emotional problems and
developmental problems); 2
individual observation and
analysis; 3 setting out goals for
action. Under-pinning the
Development
Designed to investigate prosocial skills:
communication and social skills; level of
awareness of others; application of positive
ways of resolving disruption and conflict;
positive choices – showing personal
responsibility and power. Piloted with 4
children. Questionnaire had a balanced
spread of emotional, moral and behavioural
issues so that prosocial skills tested in a
variety of situations
Used Salovey’s 5 domains: knowing one’s
emotions, managing emotions, motivating
oneself, recognising emotions in others and
handling relationships. Adapted interpretation
of the National Curriculum to address the
goals attached to each of these domains.
Used multiple sources of information about
children (behaviour books, bullying
questionnaire, parental comments, interviews
with children, staff comments, professional
judgement, SATs scores etc). Also used an
Attitudes to School questionnaire. Used all the
information to plot a matrix and then devised a
How I see myself questionnaire
No details
Users
Evaluation of the
School and Family
Links Programme: aims
to improve prosocial
behaviours in 5-8 yearolds.
Reliability & Validity
N/a
Authors
Evaluation conducted by
authors, showed
improvements in emotional
intelligence and SATs
performances.
Developed at the Centre for Experiential
Education in Leuven by Prof Laevers. Two
strong indicators of quality of development
from the Experiential Education Project were
wellbeing and involvement. As with the LIS,
teachers are asked to observe children and
Centre for Experiential
Education
81
Martin Seligman/ Sylvia
Rockwell UIC.EDU
Validation study showed
significant differences
between EBD children and
mainstream children.
Process-oriented
Child Monitoring
System (POMS)
cont
Pupil Attitude to
Self and School
PASS
Goodall, 2002
Instrument
Record of
assessment for
emotional literacy
Mason Moor
Primary School,
assessment are the following
concepts: Basic needs: physical
needs, need for affection,
warmth, tenderness, need for
safety, clarity, continuity, need
for recognition, need to
experience oneself as
competent, need for moral
correctness and give life
meaning. Signs of well-being:
openness and receptivity,
flexibility, self-confidence and
self-esteem, able to defend
oneself and assertiveness,
vitality, relaxation, enjoyment
without restraints, being in
touch with one’s self.
Computerised 50 item rating
scale assessing children’s
attitudes to themselves as
learners and their school. 9
factors: 1: feelings about
school; 2: perceived learning
capability; 3: self-regard; 4:
approach to learning situations;
5: attitude to teachers; 6:
attitude to work; 7: confidence
in learning; 8 attitude to
attendance; 9: attitude to work
demands.
rate them on scales. The scales have been
developed with either 3 levels (variant A) or
with 5 levels (variant B) for more
differentiation.
Developed in collaboration with the
Universities of Exeter and Birmingham.
Principles underpinning PASS were social
inclusion, ethical testing, ecological
perspectives and pragmatism. Theoretical
perspectives are based on Tuckman’s model
(1999). Three versions developed and piloted
independently in primary, secondary and FE
sectors with representative samples
(n>6,000). Evaluated.
Goodall, Cumbria LEA
Item and factor analysis
conducted indicated high
reliability and validity.
Description
Checklist for 3 aspects of
children’s awareness: handling
relationships, managing and
knowing own emotions and
recognising emotions in other.
Development
Part of the Southampton Emotional Literacy
Interest Group.
Users
Mason Moor Primary
School, Southampton
Reliability & Validity
Evaluated in the Spring Term
2000. On balance the
evaluation was favourable
with the youngest children
experiencing some difficulty
82
Reintegration
Readiness Scale
(this is based on,
but different from,
McSherry’s scale)
Doyle, 2002
Self-Esteem
Indicator
Morris, 2001
Short Term
Education and
Pupil Support
STEPS
Items scored on a 4 point scale
a=consistently to d=very rarely.
Quantitative assessment tool
that analyses behaviour:
readiness to reintegrate and
identifies areas where further
development is needed.
Not as broad as the Boxall
Profile. 5 scales: self-control
and behaviour management,
social skills, self-awareness
and confidence, learning skills
and approach to learning. Child
is rated against statements in
each scale on one of 4 levels
(rarely to always fulfils this
criterion). + blank profile chart
to monitor change.
Brief check-list of 22 items. 3
subscales: sense of personal
power, sense of self and sense
of belonging.
Check list of 91 items. 3
subscales: learning, conduct
and emotional behaviours.
Positive and negative
dimensions of each item.
Scored on a 1-6 scale;
1=always to 6=most likely.
in performing in the
assessment.
None
Builds on nurture group principles. The Boxall
profile identifies children who would benefit
from taking part in a nurturing group. The
Readiness Reintegration Scale identifies
when the child can be returned to the main
stream. Based also on Portage Early
Education Programme, McSherry’s
Reintegration Programme and the Early
Learning Goals QCA.
A numerical score is derived from the
statements and a score of 70%+ of maximum
score is considered to indicate readiness for
reintegration.
Rebecca Doyle,
Canterbury Infant
School, Thetford
Developed by Elizabeth Morris, influenced by
the work of Gottman, at Washington
University.
Linda Hoggan,
Simpson Children
Centre Milton Keynes.
No details given.
No details given. The construction of this
instrument is different as each item has
positive and negative aspects e.g. attentive
and listens vs distracted and inattentive
respectively. The scoring is on a 1-6 scale,
with positive behaviours scoring 6-4 and
higher frequencies of negative behaviours
scoring 3-1.
Stockport Metropolitan
Borough Council
No details given
83
Instrument
The Taking Care
Project
Sheffield.
Description
Interview based. Uses
scenarios of bullying and
domestic conflict to elicit feeling
words and help seeking
intentions. Ability to express
emotions improved. Addressed
through circle time, expressive
drama, etc.
Development
Children were interviewed before and after the
sessions, using scenarios of bullying and
domestic conflict, to elicit feeling words and
help-seeking intentions. Teachers were asked
to rate individual children and whole class
before and after the sessions. Explored ability
to express emotions and numbers of feelings
words they used spontaneously. Found:
words such as miserable, glad, surprised and
jealous.
84
Users
One of the Emotional
Literacy Initiative
projects. Sheffield.
Reliability & Validity
Evaluation of the Year 2 and
4 classes showed that
sessions were beneficial to
children. Significant
improvements in ability to
express emotions and seek
help across age and gender.
Hunt & Crow, 2001
Table 2b: Practical application of the instruments
Instrument
Adaptive Social Behaviour
Inventory
Hogan et al., 1992
Boxall profile
Bennathan & Boxall, 1998
Cogs
Ball, 2002
Coping in School Scale
McSherry, 2001
Type
Rating scale
Age group
3-5 years
Who completes & Time
Teacher
Setting
School
Population
Rating scale
Primary
Teacher
School
Inner London primary school children, no
details of numbers in the manual.
Self-report
Primary
Child
School
Rating scale
Teacher and pupil
School
Devereux Early Childhood
Assessment Programme
LeBuffe & Naglieri, 1998,
Early Development
Instrument,
Offord & Janus, 2001
Early Years Profile,
Hereford & Worcester
Partnership, 1997
Emotional Behaviour
Scale
Clarbour & Roger, 2000
Emotional and
Behavioural Development
Scales
Riding et al., 2002
Emotional Quotient
Inventory
EQ-i:YV
Bar-On & Parker, 2000
Enable
Banks et al., 2001
Rating scales
Late primary
into
secondary
2-5 years
Teachers and parents
School
Rating scale
Kindergarten
Teacher
School
Rating scale
Early Years
Teacher
School
Manual and supporting material all Early Years
children in Hereford and Worcester.
Self-report
8-19 years
Child
School
228, Year 7, 222 Year 8 and 191 Year 9 pupils
from a comprehensive school
Rating scale
Infant, Junior
and
secondary
Teacher
1-15 min average time 4 min
School
900 teachers from 60 EBD schools,
10MLD/SLD schools and 75 mainstream
schools.
Self-report
7-18 years
Youths and children (+ version
for adults)
School,
home
US normative data.
Computerised
statement
selection
Selection of
instruments
Any
Teacher (about child or self),
parent, child
School
(usually)
Various
Various
School,
home
Series of primary schools in Newham with ad
hoc development in others over the course of
10 years.
Website with selection of instruments primarily
concerned with behaviour and social conduct.
Fasttrack
Greenberg et al.,
85
EBD children and mainstream children from
Wandsworth and other authorities across the
country (n= 10).
2000 preschool children from 28 states. 51%
boys. 25% from low income families and
sample was ethnically mixed.
Cited in a systematic review
Instrument
Leuven Involvement Scale
for Young Children
Laevers, 1994
Type
Observation
and Rating
scale
Age group
3-5 years
Who completes & Time
Teachers
Setting
School
Mary Layton, 1996
Structured
interview
5-8 years
Child
School,
home
New Close Primary School
Project
McCalley & Potter, 2002
The Optimistic Child
Seligman & Rockwell, 2002
Process-oriented Child
Monitoring System
Laevers et al., no date
Pupil Attitude to Self and
School
Goodall, 2002
Rating scale
and written
statements
Self-report
10-11 years
Teacher and child
School
Population
Widely used. Used to monitor the Effective Early
Learning project in Worcester where 3000 adults
were trained and 30,000 pre-school children were
observed.
Part of the evaluation of the School and Family
Links Programme. 60 children (30 each in two
schools, 1 control and 1 experimental)
31, Y6 children at New Close Primary School
8-12 years
Child
School
No detail
Rating scale
Teacher
School
Manual includes case studies of 4 and 5 yearolds.
Self-report
4-5 years
cases in
manual
8-16 years
Child
School
Record of assessment for
emotional literacy
Mason Moor Primary School
Reintegration Readiness
Scale
Doyle, 2002
Self-Esteem Indicator
Morris, 2001
STEPS
Stockport Council
The Taking Care Project
Sheffield.
Rating scale
7-11 years
Teacher
School
UK normative data. 10,000 in 70 schools and
standardised for Y4 to Y11. Results are given as
centile scores standardised for age (individual) or
% maximum scores standardised for whole
sample (school).
Mason Moor Primary school
Rating scale
Infants
Teachers
‘quick’
School
Author’s own Infant School.
Rating scale
Early years
Teacher
School
No detail
Teacher
School
No detail
Teacher
School
Developed as part of Antidote
Rating scale
Self-report
5 -11 years
86
Section 3: Instruments in development
Table 3a: Description of the instruments
Instrument
Accounting Early for
Life Long Learning
AcE Project
Pascal & Bertram,
2001
Ellis & Jennings,
2002
Description
Scales for teachers to rate
children. Specific observation
sheets detailing indicators of
attitudes, dispositions and
emotional wellbeing (intention
is to identify children who
need support). Practice
focused for improving the
learning experience of 3-6
year-olds. Scales: emotional
literacy (eg express and work
with own emotions, empathy,
express vitality, appreciate
moral culture); empowerment
(eg unafraid, confidence to
explore, pride, purposeful);
connectedness (eg
attachment to people, sense
of belonging); positive selfesteem (eg demonstrate
confidence, respect own
beliefs, resolve conflict, sense
of humour, express values).
Pre school transfer form that
will lead to entry profile
covering the first half term
and end with the Foundation
Stage Profile.
Development
Builds on the Effective Early
Learning Project (EEL) (which
used the Child Involvement Scale
and the Adult Engagement Scale).
Working in conjunction with the
Experiential Education (EXE)
project in Belgium to develop
scales. Work on attitudes and
disposition scales carried out.
Second pilot in about 15 settings
in Autumn 2002. Influenced by the
work of Ferre Laevers. Based on
observations of children (staff
need training).
Developers
Fiona Ramsden, University
College Worcester.
Working in collaboration with
Birmingham, Bristol,
Nottingham, and Worcester
LEAs.
Being developed in Somerset.
Based on the curriculum guidance
for Foundation Stage. Simple
format, teacher friendly.
Sue Ellis and Julia Jennings
Somerset County Council
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Reliability & Validity
This project is set in the qualitative
research paradigm, using case
study and action research
methods.
Instrument
Effective Lifelong
Learning Inventory
ELLI
Effective Learning
Profile
Broadfoot et al.,
2002
Description
65 items scored on a 5 point
Likert scale: 1= almost never
to 5=nearly always. Designed
with emotional competences
embedded in the items – has
a learning focus.
Emotional Literacy
Audit (of
organisational
culture).
ELA
Antidote
Assesses how to foster
emotional literacy at the
organisational level in
schools.
Feelings and
Empathy
Questionnaire
Browning, 2002
Dissertation based on
emotional literacy. Feelings
vocabulary, empathy for and
perceptions of others. 3 tasks:
what other people think of
them, developing a
vocabulary, short story to
empathise with.
Development
In development at Bristol
University with National Learning
Foundation backing. Items
generated from three sources:
items from an instrument
developed in school based action
research; literature review and
consultation with experts. The
instrument is self-report, and most
of work done with 7-18 year-olds
(n=1604 in second pilot, n=180 in
first). Version for KS1 – JELLI and
one for adults.
Emotional Literacy Initiative will
run from 2001 to 2004 and key
strategy is to develop ESI. Three
schools in Newham, children aged
from nursery to 16 years.
Research Questions: how do
individuals experience the
emotional and social atmosphere
of the whole organisation? What
factors inhibit or facilitate
individuals in processing their
emotional and social experience?
How can emotional literacy be
fostered at an organisational
level? Using questionnaires,
interviews and focus groups.
Initial work done to develop the
three tasks: virtually finished. Part
of research included short
questionnaire. 3 sections:1 what
they thought other people thought
of them; 2. write as many feeling
words as you can; 3. story how
would you feel, what would you do
in their place?.
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Developers
Broadfoot, Caxton and
Deakin-Crick, University of
Bristol.
Reliability & Validity
Factor analysis completed for pilot
(n=180). Showed 7 factors but 3
are similar so next version will
have 5. Validity and reliability
studies on-going.
Antidote
MEd student at Bristol, about
to submit.
Behaviour support teacher
Wiltshire
Formal reliability and validity
studies not conducted, but before
and after results in school very
positive.
Instrument
Simon Priest, 2002
Sefton Council
Social Competence
Test
SCoT
Laevers, 2002
(3 Masters students)
Talkit
Tew, 2002
Description
No details of instrument
supplied. Rating scale for
teachers to reflect on their
own practice, early attempt at
developing instrument. In
order to be effective, this
would need to be developed
into an all round appraisal.
Action research project
developing a framework for
teaching emotional and social
skills with 4-11 year-olds.
Student’s instrument: 12
video scenes displayed by
puppets + 2 Mr Bean
fragments of video. Individual
children are shown videos
which are stopped several
times following a standardised
procedure. Children are
asked about the following:
role taking at the level of 1.
feelings and emotions, 2.
perceptions and cognitions, 3.
intentions and motives, +
understanding behaviour,
predicting behaviour and
acting in a socially competent
way. Children are scored on a
4-point scale based on
categorisation of answers.
Profiling young people
providing a vocabulary and a
‘talking tool’ to be used by
form tutors and year 7 pupils.
Profiling tool that will be
computerised and compatible
with SIMS. Potential to
Development
Mentioned an early and naïve
attempt for use by groups of staff
to prompt self-reflection and
discussion. Goleman formulation
(self-awareness, self-regulation,
motivation, empathy and social
skills).
Developers
Senior Educational
Psychologist
Rotherham Metropolitan
Borough Council.
Reliability & Validity
Untested
Pilot. Using experiences to plan
activities across the curriculum.
Angela Walker,
Educational Psychologist
Sefton
Evaluation planned but not
conducted.
The SCoT has a process
orientation to assessment. It is the
next step in assessing emotional
and social competence. Laevers’
work has included the Learning
Involvement Scale and the Box
Full of Feelings. Three Masters
students have submitted a thesis
on the development of an
instrument to assess emotional
and social competence
Ferre Laevers, Prof at Leuven
University.
Preliminary factor analyses
conducted with 4-7-year-olds.
Reliability and validity studies
being planned.
Study started with conventional
assessment measures.
Developing a personal construct
framework for children – i.e.
children develop their own
framework and this is a method to
assess it. Statements from
Marylin Tew,
PhD student at Bristol
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Student’s instrument: high level of
internal consistency (0.80 to 0.93),
high correlation between the two
parts of the test (0.70 to 0.83) for
different ages. High reliability at
the level of scoring (0.81 to 0.97).
High correlation between age and
results but there is a ceiling effect
for the 8 year olds. High level of
involvement. Sensitive to change
as a result of intervention with the
Box Full of Feelings materials.
Derived 154 statements from
interviews with children, these
have been verified by triangulation
(comparisons of children’s
groupings of statements – if the
same statements are grouped
together by different children, this
What I think about
my school
Roche, 2002
compare self, peers, teacher,
parent. Asks children to
profile themselves emotionally
in the context of the school 5
subscales: controlling
emotions, keeping motivated,
confidence in different
situations, inter-personal
empathy and a 5th smaller
scale for integrity.
Questionnaire for 7-10 year
olds
children – developing a talking
tool.
Based on the QCA document, as
NSPCC emotional assessment
questionnaire, Healthy schools
information, Cumbria Behaviour
Curriculum and Birmingham
frameworks for Interventions.
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indicates validity in the grouping).
Paula Crosbie, Education
Dept. Nottingham
None
Table 3b: Practical application of the instruments
Instrument
Accounting Early for Life
Long Learning Project
Pascall & Bertram, 2001
Effective Lifelong Learning
Inventory
Broadfoot et al. 2002
Ellis & Jennings, 2002
Emotional Literacy Audit
(of organisational culture).
Antidote
Feelings and Empathy
Questionnaire
Browning, 2002
Talkit
Tew, 2002
Sefton Council
Social Competence Test
(Laevers, 2002)
What I think about my
school
Roche, 2002
Type
Observational
scale
Age group
3-6 years
Who completes & Time
Teachers, practitioners
Setting
School
Population in paper
UK children
Self-report
7-18 years
Child
School
180 in first pilot with 1604 in second pilot.
Rating scale
Questionnaire,
interview
3-16 years
Teacher
Child, teachers
School
School
No details
3 schools in Newham
Interactive
interview/self
report
Child interview
7-11 years
Teachers
School
7-11 year olds in her study
Year 7
Child, peers, teacher, parent.
School
Rating scale
Video based
4-11 years
4-8 years
Teacher
Children
School
School,
11-12 year olds in author’s study, but could go
down to 8 years and older than 12 years.
Pilot, no details of numbers
Master’s degree subjects (n=41)
Self-report
7-11 years
Children
School
No details
Some of the instruments are in early development and so data were limited. The following instruments have not been included in Tables 3b and 3d because
we had insufficient detail about them : (those developed by Ellis, Priest and Prince, the Inch Project, Play wise, and Sefton Council).
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