Abstract
Responding to the need for school-based, broadly applicable, low-cost, and brief assessments of socio-emotional skills, we describe the conceptual background and empirical development of the SENNA inventory and provide new psychometric information on its internal structure. Data were obtained through a computerized survey from 50,000 Brazilian students enrolled in public school grades 6 to 12, spread across the entire State of São Paulo. The SENNA inventory was designed to assess 18 particular skills (e.g., empathy, responsibility, tolerance of frustration, and social initiative), each operationalized by nine items that represent three types of items: three positively keyed trait-identity items, three negatively keyed identity items, and three (always positively keyed) self-efficacy items, totaling a set of 162 items. Results show that the 18 skill constructs empirically defined a higher-order structure that we interpret as the social-emotional Big Five, labeled as Engaging with Others, Amity, Self-Management, Emotional Regulation, and Open-Mindedness. The same five factors emerged whether we assessed the 18 skills with items representing (a) a trait-identity approach that emphasizes lived skills (what do I typically do?) or (b) a self-efficacy approach that emphasizes capability (how well can I do that?). Given that its target youth group is as young as 11 years old (grade 6), a population particularly prone to the response bias of acquiescence, SENNA is also equipped to correct for individual differences in acquiescence, which are shown to systematically bias results when not corrected.
Highlights
Over the past two decades, education scientists and policy-makers showed an increased attention for the assessment and learning of Social-Emotional Skills, called 21st century skills (Abrahams et al, 2019)
This paper described the developmental history of SENNA and provided new psychometric information on its internal structure obtained from a large sample of 50,000 Brazilian students enrolled in public school grades 6 to 12, spread across the entire State of São Paulo
The SENNA inventory was designed as an instrument assessing 18 different skills, each operationalized by nine items that represent three types of items: three positively keyed identity items and three negatively keyed identity items, complemented with three self-efficacy items, totaling a set of 162 items
Summary
Over the past two decades, education scientists and policy-makers showed an increased attention for the assessment and learning of Social-Emotional Skills, called 21st century skills (from here onward abbreviated as SEMS) (Abrahams et al, 2019). This interest shift built on the notion that more traditional indicators of scholastic achievement, such as scores on math and reading, are SENNA Inventory not sufficient for a successful and happy life and for dealing with the challenges of today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world. The reviews by Abrahams et al (2019) further clarified that, in order to advance this field, we first need to converge on a taxonomy structuring SEMS, so we can design assessment instruments to examine pertinent research questions and support educators and teachers with formative and summative tools for assessing SEMS
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