There are several teacher and parent rating scales of social competence but they may or may not align with direct observation measures completed by well trained observers ( i.e., BASC, SSRS, and others come to mind) with ratings of social skills and behavioral difficulties. Obviously, relationship becomes even more challenging.

Are you trying to establish a composite measure?

Bill Brown

I've used the BITSEA and liked the results. It's a social competence measure.

We use the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ; http://www.sdqinfo.org/). Best wishes, Serge

You can use Social Skills Rating system for social competence

Http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18778167 related, if not exactly what you're looking for.

I see there are many options as I had suspected and I'll have to do careful reading to select one. I will be needing a straightforward paper-pencil measure, or if it is observational, one that does not require special training to be able to take advantage of video-taping that is taking place for other reasons.

Thank you all so much for your thoughtful comments and suggestions!

MacArthur health and behavior questionnaire ... HBQ (look at Essex et al., papers)

I like Gresham and Elliott's SSRS

http://psychcorp.pearsonassessments.com/HAIWEB/Cultures/en-us/Productdetail.htm?Pid=PAassrs&Mode=summary

You would need to do some staff development on observation and performance assessment. There are some outstanding resources that are available all the way form researched methods to "home brew".... The University of Wisconsin Madison did some research on prosocial development at the same time they set up school programs for academic achievement. There research results were promoted by Kettering Foundation ; you would also want to look at Comer's work with young children. If the staff had agreed on what they wanted to observe (in other words, standards are in place and agreed upon) then you could pick from a variety of instruments available depending upon which one matched your goals and expectations. ETS has some staff development guidlelines for a faculty agreeing upon the standards and performances to be observed and measured (as I mentioned, U. Wisconsin Madison did some of this in school programs such as "indivudally conferencing" and measuring some of the academic skills that would be related to pro-social... check for Herb Klausmeier's name .

Have a look at the following (let me know if you would like copies of any of the measures described in these studies):

Rubin, K.H. & Clark, M.L. (1983). Preschool teachers' ratings of behavioral problems: Observational, sociometric, and social-cognitive correlates. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 11, 273-286.

Krasnor, L.R. & Rubin, K.H. (1983). Preschool social problem-solving: Attempts and outcomes in naturalistic interaction. Child Development, 54, 1545-1558.

Rubin, K.H., Coplan, R.J., Fox, N.A., & Calkins, S.D. (1995). Emotionality, emotion regulation, and preschoolers' social adaptation. Development and Psychopathology, 7, 49-62.

Fox, N.A., Rubin, K.H., Calkins, S.D., Marshall, T.R., Coplan, R.J., Porges, S.W., Long, J. & Stewart, S.L. (1995). Frontal activation asymmetry and social competence at four years of age: Left frontal hyper- and hypo-activation as correlates of social behavior in preschool children.

Coplan, R.J. & Rubin, K.H. (1998) Exploring and assessing nonsocial play in the preschool: The Development and validation of the Preschool Play Behavior Scale. Social Development, 7, 72-91.

Nelson, L.J., Rubin, K.H., & Fox, N.A. (2005). Social withdrawal, observed peer acceptance, and the development of self-perceptions in children ages 4 to 7 years Early Education and Development, 20, 185-200. doi:10.1016/j.ecresq.2005.04.007

Hastings, P.D., Rubin, K.H., & DeRose, L. (2005). Links Among Gender, Inhibition, and Parental Socialization in the Development of Prosocial Behavior. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 51, 467-493.

In our Studies we use the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) and the Teacher Assessment of Social Behavior (TASB). They are short, well developed and very often used.

Thanks again to all for your suggestions. The plethora of measures is rather overwhelming and I'm carefully making my way through to see what best fits our research question.

Dr. Rubin, your Play Observation Scale looks very interesting as well. I noticed you include rough & tumble play and am wondering if you have since added any way to code other forms of challenging/risky play - the kind of play that straddles the line between exhilaration and fear (as defined by Sandseter, 2007)?

I published few papers on the topic of development and assessment of caring dispositions in young children and pre-service teachers. Maybe this will help.

2011 An analysis of caring behaviors among teachers and children Early Child Development

and Care ,182(10)1185-1192.

2010 Moving from ethical awareness to deeper understanding and practice: Kindergarten

Teachers’ experience with developing caring dispositions in children, Early Child

Development and Care, 180(4) 441-452.

2007 “Development of Caring Dispositions in Preservice Teachers- Pilot Project”, Teaching and

Practice, 20 (4),444-463.

Hi ,

Just to add to the mix....pro-social behaviour is also reflected in competence language use - a normed and well used measure of this is the Children's Communication Checklist http://www.pearsonassessments.com/HAIWEB/Cultures/en-us/Productdetail.htm?Pid=015-8440-48X

Hope this helps. Jan

Both paper-pencil measure and observational measures are applied in your design might make the results more reliable, have a look at the following study:

Knafo, A., S. Israel, et al. (2011). "Heritability of children's prosocial behavior and differential susceptibility to parenting by variation in the dopamine receptor D4 gene." Development and Psychopathology 23(1): 53-67.

Dunfield, K., Kuhlmeier, V. A., O'Connell, L., & Kelley, E. (2011). Examining the Diversity of Prosocial Behavior: Helping, Sharing, and Comforting in Infancy. Infancy, 16(3), 227-247.

You might be able to modify a measure we have created --the Early Childhood Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire (24 items; appropriate for use with 4-7 year olds). Contact me for more information about how this could be modified to refer to "best friend" or peer interaction. Ron Rohner [email protected]

Hi, please give a closer look to the SDQ (www.sdq.info).

BW s