Informant Screening Profiles of Social and Emotional Learning: Exploring Teacher and Student Agreement

Abstract

When conducting universal social and emotional learning (SEL) screening, schools need clear decision-making guidelines for selecting informants. The current study examined informant profiles for screening SEL functioning using latent profile analysis with the student and teacher forms of the SSIS SEL Brief Scales for 536 students in grades 3–7. Teacher and student models each had three profiles emerge with roughly similar meanings of the profiles (Developing, Competent, and Advanced profiles), although a larger percentage of students were identified in the developing profile for the student rater. Profile categories aligned for 42% of students, with the most disagreement according between the Competent and Advanced SEL categories. For the teacher and student combined model, five profiles emerged (Competent-Developing, Developing-Competent, Competent-High Competent, Competent-Competent, and Advanced-Competent), with one profile indicating informant agreement. We explore gender and grade setting covariates and discuss implications for multi-informant research and practice.