DEVELOPMENT OF THE STUDENT ENGAGEMENT IN SOCIAL–EMOTIONAL LEARNING SKILLS (SE-SELS) SURVEY: AN ASSESSMENT TOOL TO MEASURE STUDENTS’ USE OF SEL SKILLS

The purpose of this study was to develop and explore the factor structure of the Student Engagement in Social–Emotional Learning Skills (SE-SELS) survey, a newly designed assessment that assesses students’ knowledge and use of five social–emotional learning skills (self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision making) aligned with the framework of the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. The SE-SELS survey includes 20 items and takes approximately 5 min to complete. Participants were 359 students in Grades 6–8 at one university-affiliated laboratory school serving students in kindergarten through eighth grade. The instrument was explored through exploratory factor analysis, which determined that the strengths of relationships among variables was satisfactory and that the model overall had strong internal reliability (α = .90). All items were retained for the final SE-SELS survey (.41 ≤ α ≤ .75). Items linked to the relationship skills component and the self-management component were merged to create a four-factor model, which ABSTRACT was a better fit for the data overall and retained all five components addressed by the SESELS survey. There is at present a lack of reliable and valid instruments that measure the effectiveness of interventions and student outcomes related to social–emotional learning. The SE-SELS survey can thus help school counselors and other educators to determine the impact of social–emotional learning interventions and provide baseline and growth data for students. Follow-up studies are needed to support the reliability and validity of the SE-SELS survey.