The assessment of social and emotional competences in adolescents: Constructing and experimenting a multidimensional questionnaire
The assessment of social and emotional competences in adolescents: Constructing and experimenting a multidimensional questionnaire

Summary/Abstract: There is much empirical evidence regarding the positive effects of social and emotional competences on adolescents’ adjustment to developmental tasks. The literature presents a wide range of measures which were designed to assess various competences. These measures vary according to the number of operationalized competences as well as the target population. Many of them cover a small portion of the competences which intervene as adjustment facilitating variables. The present study reveals the steps taken to develop and test a multidimensional questionnaire (The Profile of Social and Emotional Competences/PSEC) which aims at measuring 17 social and emotional competences (e.g., emotional expression, empathy, ability to develop positive interpersonal relations, communication etc.). Data obtained following self-administration of the preliminary version of the PSEC on a sample of 1383 Romanian adolescents are summarized. In order to examine the construct validity of the PSEC, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted. For most of the item parcels which were supposed to be indicators of competence, data revealed a model of measurement with two factors, in which positively phrased items showed loadings in one factor, while the negatively phrased items showed loadings in another factor. The scales corresponding to 17 competences showed satisfactory internal consistency. In the last part of this paper, a few considerations regarding the usefulness of assessing social and emotional competences in relation to the purpose of training programs are presented.

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