A Bottom-Up Approach to Measuring Student Social–Emotional Competence

Abstract

This brief report describes a pilot test toward developing a new measure of student social-emotional competence informed by the five-factor model proposed by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL 5). Current measures of the CASEL 5 are limited by top-down development approaches that may contribute to confirmation bias. Our development approach starts from the bottom-up and relies on exploratory methods to create and refine a relevant item pool. We administered the 47 best pilot items to a sample of 19 elementary teachers who rated all students in their classes (N = 415). We then evaluated the structural validity of responses to the pilot items via EFA in search of simple structure. Contrary to our expectations, results yielded a 14-item, two-factor measurement model that was more parsimonious than the CASEL 5, representing themes of community competence and personal competence. Scores from this new measure, which we tentatively name the Student Social–Emotional Competence Teacher Rating Scale, showed relatively normal distributions and theoretically consistent convergent and discriminant relations with other measures of student well-being and mental health. We discuss limitations of our findings related to generalizability and suggest next steps for progressing research in this area. Impact Statement Preliminary findings demonstrate that taking a bottom-up approach to developing a new measure informed by the CASEL 5 can unexpectedly lead to a measurement model misaligned with the CASEL 5. Our findings highlight the value of employing exploratory methods within the scale development process. Moreover, our findings suggest the potential benefit of reevaluating current measures of the CASEL 5 using bottom-up and exploratory methods.