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It is useful to include both adult and youth perspectives when assessing youth (Eiser & Morse, 2001). However, youth and adults reports tend to have low correlations (r = .20) between assessments (Achenbach et al., 1987). The Devereux Student Strengths Assessment Mini (DESSA-Mini; LeBuffe, Naglieri, & Shapiro, 2011) is a brief strengths-based behavior rating scale assessing social emotional competence (SEC). Though psychometrically sound for adult raters, the potential of the DESSA-Mini as a self-report instrument among children receiving a preventive intervention has not yet been explored.
This pilot study invited 4th and 5th grade students to provide ratings of their own SEC, asking students to respond to the DESSA-Mini questions in a first person format. Student ratings were compared to teacher DESSA-Mini ratings and student self-reported responses to questions from the well-established Youth Development Survey (YDS; Arthur, Hawkins, Pollard, Catalano, & Baglioni, 2002). We explored the relationship between student and teacher reports of student SEC and student-report of four related YDS scales (school recognition for pro-social involvement, healthy belief and clear standards, school academic success, and social skills), and the extent that student self-assessment predicted teacher assessment.
Methods:
Students were 78 4th and 5th graders participating in Playworks leadership programming (www.playworks.org) (55% female; 51% fifth grade; 55% Hispanic/Latino). A subset of 30 students (38%) had teacher ratings in addition to complete data (i.e. no items missing) for all other scales. DESSA-Mini items for students were summed into a Raw Score Total and standardized within rater to parallel instructions in the user-manual. YDS scores were standardized within the sample. Correlations and hierarchical linear models, nesting by school, were calculated.
Results:
Students self-reported a mean SEC of 25.24 points (SD: 5.28). Significant correlations between student-reported SEC and YDS scores ranged from .30-.44. For the subset of students with teacher SEC ratings, teachers reported students’ mean SEC as 59.03 T-score points (SD: 8.05). Teacher and student reports of SEC were not significantly correlated (p = .29). None of the YDS scales or student-reported SEC significantly predicted teacher SEC.
Conclusions:
The comparison of students’ self-reported SEC to the YDS scales provides some evidence of concurrent validity. Teachers reported students in this sample with higher SEC than the national standardization sample. Teachers and students appear to have different perceptions of SEC, typical of youth and adult raters (Achenbach et al., 1987), though future studies with a larger sample size may achieve statistical significance.