The Assessment of Children’s Social Emotional and Healthy Behaviors Across the United States and Europe

Understanding the multi-dimensional construct of social emotional learning and the development of social emotional healthy behaviors in children across the globe requires high quality assessment tools translated into multiple languages and responsive to diverse cultures. Over the past 5 years, we have collaborated with researchers in the United States and nine European countries to document PreK-12 children’s social emotional skills based on teachers’, parents’, and students’ ratings on the SSIS SEL Brief Scales and SSIS SEL Brief + Mental Health Scales, and most recently the SSIS Social & Behavioral Health Scales. This chapter (a) summarizes what we have learned about the assessment of SEL and related constructs of stress and internalizing and externalizing emotional concerns with diverse samples of more than 40,000 students, (b) provides an evolving resilience framework to advance an expanded conceptualization of social emotional health, and (c) outlines key questions to drive further assessment research.