Assessing social–emotional development: Reliability and validity of the social–emotional responding task.

Abstract

The Social-Emotional Responding Task (SERT) assesses children's anticipated emotions in the contexts of transgressions (Malti, The Social-Emotional Responding Task. Unpublished tool by T. Malti, 2017.). We present a systematic psychometric evaluation of the SERT using data from two different samples of 4-8-year-old children from Canada (N = 291, M-age = 6.55 years, SDs = 2.02, 50% boys in Sample 1 and N = 282, M-age = 6.57 years, SDs = 1.56, 49% boys in Sample 2). Children reported their anticipated emotions in six vignettes describing three domains of transgressions [aggressive acts (AA), prosocial omission (PO), and social exclusion (SE)]. Caregivers rated children's sympathy and prosocial and aggressive behaviors. Results supported a one-factor ("domain-general") model over a three-factor ("domain-specific") model, indicating convergence of anticipated emotions across vignettes and domains. Measurement invariance was established across gender and age groups, indicating the robustness of the assessment. Construct validity was supported by associations with sympathy and less robustly, with prosocial and aggressive behavior. We discuss the use of SERT as an assessment tool for children's social-emotional capacities in research and practice settings.