Development and Validation of the Character Skills Snapshot

• In Event: 25.079 - Leveraging Social and Emotional Learning for Student Success: From Assessment to Program Implementation

Abstract

The Character Skills Snapshot is an assessment of social and emotional learning (SEL) developed by the Enrollment Management Association (EMA) and Educational Testing Service (ETS) that measures seven skills: intellectual engagement, teamwork, initiative, resilience, open-mindedness, self-control, and social awareness. The Snapshot was designed for the independent school community as an evaluation of an applicant’s character during the admissions process. Independent schools, as part of their history, have emphasized the importance of character as part of their founding principles. Schools include character in their missions, in their buildings and in their curriculum. Most independent schools, as part of their admissions processes, evaluate student character in some way (e.g., interviews, personal statements and letters of recommendation) yet these approaches are resource consuming, subjective, threatened by evaluator bias and difficult to administer equally across schools. The Snapshot represents the first standardized approach to measuring character that maintains consistency from student to student, reducing the impact of interviewer bias or school differences.
The 2017-2018 school year represented the Snapshot’s first year of operational use with over 16,000 unique test takers and over 500 schools agreeing to accept Snapshot scores from their students. While preliminary analysis has revealed a lot of descriptive data about the sample, there are a number of unknowns that cannot be examined until we have collected performance data from the first year of applicants.
An operational data validity study for the Character Skills Snapshot is currently underway. Data will be collected in two waves. First, and already collected, is a sample of 4,000 students who took the Snapshot and submitted their application through a standardized online system. With this data the relationship between Snapshot results and many external criteria (grades, class rank, standardized test scores, extracurricular activities, teacher ratings of character, etc) can be investigated. Second, we will ask schools to complete data templates for their matriculated students in order to understand the relationship of Snapshot skills and academic performance one year later.
This paper will first provide a brief summary of Snapshot’s development process, including an overview of construct selection, item development, and construct validation. Following, it will highlight some of the larger practical and methodological challenges that were faced prior to Snapshot’s formal transition into operational launch. It will then provide an overview of findings from the preliminary validity study from a data set of 681 students who participated in the large-scale field trial of the Snapshot. Finally, it will touch upon the current validity study and highlight some early findings from this data.

Authors

• Meghan Wilson Brenneman, Enrollment Management Association

• Kevin Petway, Enrollment Management Association