Development and Validation of the Social Emotional Competence Questionnaire (SECQ)

Reliable and valid measures of children’s and adolescents’ social emotional \ncompetence (SEC) are necessary to develop in order to assess their social \nemotional development and provide appropriate intervention in child and \nadolescent development. A pool of 25 items was created for the Social \nEmotional Competence Questionnaire (SECQ) that represented five dimensions \nof SEC: self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relationship \nmanagement and responsible decision-making. A series of four studies are \nreported relating to the development and validation of the measure. \nConfirmatory factor analyses of the responses of 444 fourth-graders showed an \nacceptable fit of the model. The model was replicated with another 356 \nsecondary school students. Additional studies revealed good internal \nconsistency. The significant correlations among the five SEC components and \nacademic performance provided evidence for the predictive validity of the \ninstrument. With multiple samples, these results showed that the scale holds \npromise as a reliable, valid measure of SEC