School readiness assessments in South Africa still predominantly focus on the assessment of cognitive skills. The Emotional Social Screening Tool for School Readiness (E3SR) was developed to bridge the perceived gap in assessing emotional-social skills as a domain of school readiness. An emerging body of research reports exists on the psychometric…

This study examined the agreement between the Ages & Stages Questionnaires, third edition (ASQ-3), and the Ages & Stages Questionnaires: Social-Emotional, second edition (ASQ:SE-2), and investigated the relationship of the overall indication of "parental concerns" about their child's behavior on the ASQ-3 and the results of the…

Introduction: Leadership support has been identified as a key facilitator to successful implementation of school-based initiatives. School leadership contributions to student academic success and school reform have been documented, but less work has focused on the effects of leadership on school mental health initiatives such as social, emotional,…

This study examined the psychometric properties of the Chinese version of the Social-Emotional Assessment Measure (SEAM) (33-66 months), which is designed to assess social-emotional difficulties and behavior disorders in young children. In this case, the SEAM was translated and back-translated. The sample included 2477 preschoolers (1256 boys;…

The present study aimed to determine whether exceptional items in human figure drawings (HFDs) can serve the identification process of talents and (educational) needs of children with high intellectual abilities. Participants were 152 children aged 4 to 6 years at the time of drawing. After 2 years, 85 had received regular curriculum (the…

The Early Identification System--Student Report (EIS-SR) is a 34-item measure of social-emotional functioning that is designed to be a low-cost universal screening tool. To date, studies of the EIS-SR demonstrate promising psychometric properties, but these properties have not yet been assessed in groups of children from historically…

Background: Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have problems acquiring language, affecting their communicative participation, social--emotional functioning (SEF) and quality of life (QoL). Aims: To investigate whether communicative participation mediates the relation between language and SEF and QoL. Methods & Procedures: In a…

Student engagement research in university students has been scarce, despite its major positive role on performance, degree completion and mental health. Social and emotional competencies, which are currently called twenty-first-century skills, exert some impact on student engagement in youth. Since engagement is cultural-sensitive, individual…

Social-emotional competence is important for children's lifelong positive developmental outcomes. The dimensionality and psychometric properties of a widely used social-emotional assessment, the Ages & Stages Questionnaires: Social-Emotional Second Edition (ASQ:SE-2), were investigated in this study using item response theory models. A…

The Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (M-CHAT) is a screening questionnaire for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Previous findings have confirmed the M-CHAT's sensitivity and specificity across several cultures, yet few studies have considered M-CHAT scores as a distributed trait in a sample of typical infants. The current study examined…

Universal screening for social-emotional and behavioral (SEB) risk is one strategy for schools to proactively identify students in need of additional supports and services. As schools serve an increasing number of children from racially and culturally diverse backgrounds, further research is needed to examine the differential functioning of brief…

The Early Identification System (EIS) was developed to overcome many of the usability challenges of school-based behavior screeners. Several prior studies have documented the technical adequacy of the EIS. The present study expanded this work by examining the use, relevance, values implications, and social consequence of EIS implementation in a…

Schools are an essential setting for mental health supports and services for students. To support student well-being, schools engage in universal mental health screening to identify students in need of support and to provide surveillance data for districtwide or statewide policy changes. Mental health data have been collected via anonymous and…

Social and emotional development in early childhood has been shown to predict long-term outcomes, including school readiness and academic achievement. Early years practitioners need robust assessment tools to adequately identify early signs of social, emotional, behavioural and mental health (SEMH) difficulties. The current study aimed to develop…

Objective: Broadband social-emotional screening tools are designed to evaluate a child's social development and interactions. Such tools are expected to have reasonable sensitivity for identifying children at risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) but would also likely over-estimate risk for ASD since other conditions can also affect social…