Mapping self-report questionnaires for socio-emotional characteristics: What do they measure?

Abstract

Whereas the structure of individual differences in many social and emotional attributes is well understood in adults, much less work has been done in children and adolescents. The main goals of this research were to specify the major content domains that are assessed across multiple socioemotional instruments (self-esteem, grit, self-efficacy, strengths and difficulties, Big Five) in research in the United States and Europe, to test them in a less developed context with considerable educational challenges (Brazilian schools). We selected the five most promising instruments and studied their structure at the item level in a large sample of Brazilian school students (N = 3,023). The extracted factors to capture the major domains of child differences represented in these instruments closely resembled the Big Five personality dimensions. We discuss the contribution of our findings to the assessment of socio-emotional skills in education research, as well as limitations of the current study, and suggestions for future research.

SENNA Inventory for the Assessment of Social and Emotional Skills in Public School Students in Brazil: Measuring Both Identity and Self-Efficacy

“…Also, a sixth factor resulted from the factor analysis, reflecting beliefs about personal control versus low self-esteem, hopelessness, and feeling defeated, that connects with low Emotional Stability. This study provided the first empirical support for the conceptual classification proposed by John and De Fruyt (2015) and the OECD (2015) (Primi et al, 2016(Primi et al, , 2019c.…”

“…The results for the Trust skill in this study were less clear, and this scale was more difficult to position uniquely in the social-emotional skill space. Overall, these findings underscore that the social-emotional Big Five is also a useful framework to organize SEMS in a non-WEIRD culture like Brazil (John et al, 2008;Kyllonen et al, 2014;Lipnevich et al, 2016;Abrahams et al, 2019;Primi et al, 2019c). This work further provided strong evidence that students from grades 6 to 12 are able to provide reliable and valid descriptions on identity and self-efficacy scales to assess a broad variety of SEMS, even when data are collected in the course of large-scale assessments.…”

“…Third, although there was some first evidence that the Social-Emotional Big Five was a useful framework (Primi et al, 2016(Primi et al, , 2019c, educational stakeholders were interested to get information on students' mastery of various more specific skills, such as responsibility, respect, or creativity, that could eventually be organized under the umbrella of the social-emotional five, as shown in Table 1. Information at the broad skill level is probably useful for directors and policy makers, but individual students and their teachers want to know the student's standing on one or more specific skills, a level that is more actionable in the classroom.…”

Construção E Evidências De Validade De Conteúdo Do Questionário De Habilidades Socioemocionais De Crianças

“…Além disso, o uso da palavra "habilidades" é aceitável por um público amplo, fornece a ideia de maleabilidade das habilidades, como algo que pode ser desenvolvido (Specht et al, 2014). Socioemocionais em uma estrutura única, nos Big Five (Primi, et al, 2019). Os resultados de ambas as análises apontam então que a taxonomia do modelo Big Five pode ser usado como modelo unificador para a construção de instrumentos para a avaliação de construídos socioemocionais (Primi, Santos, Hauck, de Fruyt & John, 2019;Santos & Primi, 2014).…”

“…Socioemocionais em uma estrutura única, nos Big Five (Primi, et al, 2019). Os resultados de ambas as análises apontam então que a taxonomia do modelo Big Five pode ser usado como modelo unificador para a construção de instrumentos para a avaliação de construídos socioemocionais (Primi, Santos, Hauck, de Fruyt & John, 2019;Santos & Primi, 2014). Tais estudos serviram como base para a escolha do modelo em que o presente estudo será realizado.…”