Enhancement and Standardization of a Universal Social-Emotional Health Measure for Students’ Psychological Strengths

Abstract

Robust evidence links students’ positive mental health with academic achievement and provides a compelling rationale for developing and refining strength-based assessments. The Social Emotional Health Survey–Secondary (SEHS-S) assesses adolescents’ social and emotional skills and positive psychological dispositions. Previous studies provide reliability and validity evidence; nonetheless, there is a need for continued refinement and validation across diverse groups. The current study revised and standardized the updated SEHS-S-2020 to validate further its use in secondary schools (Grades 9–12) with a large, diverse adolescent sample. Study participants included 72,740 from 113 California schools (structural validation sample), 10,757 students from 15 randomly selected California schools (criterion validation sample), and 707 students from four additional California schools (test-retest sample). Data analyses examined structural validity, measurement invariance, criterion validity, internal consistency, and response stability. Results supported the SEHS-S-2020 validity across diverse groups of youth in various contexts. The discussion focuses on implications for assessing students’ psychosocial assets and universal school-based screening.

Heterogeneity Among Moderate Mental Health Students on the Mental Health Continuum-Short Form (MHC-SF)

“…Example items are: I feel bad when someone gets their feelings hurt and I think before I act . The SEHS-S has been examined in representative samples of middle and high school students in the USA, showing high validity and internal reliability estimates (Furlong et al, 2014 , 2021 ; You et al, 2014 ). The latent meta-construct, Covitality, representing an overall level of social emotional competencies, is correlated with students’ grade-point-average (You et al, 2014 ), perceived school safety, and substance use among US high school students (Furlong et al, 2014 ).…”

“…Subsequently, we examined the LPA profile associations with student psychological strengths and distress to assess the profiles’ meaning and validity. In addition, we included psychological strengths and distress as proxies of quality of life given their robust and extensive associations with youth functioning in various aspects (e.g., substance use and academic achievement; Furlong et al, 2021 ; Dowdy et al, 2018 ). Finally, to inform educators’ application of the current study’s results, we evaluated the students’ MHC-SF diagnostic categories’ congruence with their LPA profiles.…”

Taking Students on a Strengths Safari: A Multidimensional Pilot Study of School-Based Wellbeing for Young Neurodiverse Children

“…Despite robust research evidence linking youth mental health and academic outcomes [ 1 ], the limited inclusion of young children, specifically those who are neurodivergent (ND), in this body of research represents a significant gap in the literature. The present pilot study synthesized and applied research from the fields of positive psychology, disability studies, and educational psychology to address this gap.…”

Bored with school! Bored with life? Well-being characteristics associated with a school boredom mindset

“…Response option are: 1 = not like me, 2 = a little like me, 3 = pretty much like me, 4 = very much like me). CFAs support a unidimensional model (Hinton et al, 2021) with acceptable reliability in the current study sample = .95.…”