Poster #205 - Examining the Validity of an Ecobehavioral Observational Assessment of Social-Emotional Skills: The Behavior Observation Measure

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

Children from low-income backgrounds are at risk for developing social-emotional difficulties during preschool (Barbarin et al., 2006). Promoting social-emotional skills for children from low-income households is particularly important because social-emotional skills are associated with later academic achievement and support a successful transition to kindergarten (Denham, 2006; Denham & Brown, 2010).

Social-emotional skills can be broken down into specific domains, including externalizing behavior, internalizing behavior, and positive behaviors (e.g., social competence). It is important to measure these skills in the classroom context to inform how children demonstrate these behaviors because they are linked to engagement in the classroom (Miller et al., 2014).

Previous research on measurement of the domains of children’s social-emotional skills has focused on teacher report. However, researchers have found that variance attributed to the assessor is highest in teacher report measures (Waterman, McDermott, Fantuzzo & Gadsden, 2012). Alternatively, systematic classroom observation is considered one of the most objective methods for measuring children’s behavior (Volpe et al., 2005).

The present study developed an ecobehavioral observational measure of preschool children’s social-emotional skills across three domains: externalizing behavior, internalizing behavior, and positive behaviors. The Behavior Observation Measure (BOM) is an event sampling system that focuses on one child and codes the presence of behaviors during a 20-minute cycle. It was developed by first working from already existing measures assessing social-emotional domains and then observing children’s behavior in the classroom to add any relevant missing behaviors to the coding scheme. The purpose of the current study was to examine the concurrent validity of the BOM related to other measures of school readiness.

The sample included 100 preschool children enrolled in Head Start preschools with 46% girls between the ages of 36 and 60 months (M=48.28, SD=6.77 months). Additionally, 43.4% of the sample was African American, 55.7% was White, and .9% was Multi-Racial. Of this sample, 56.9% were Hispanic. The validity measures used in the study are included in Table 1.

To score the data, we created three domains: (a) positive behavior, which included a sum of all of the positive behaviors seen in the classroom, such as positive engagement with others and social communication; (b) externalizing behavior, which took a sum of all of the hyperactive and aggressive behaviors seen in the classroom; and (c) internalizing behavior, which included a sum of all of the anxious and withdrawn behaviors seen in the classroom. We used regression analyses in SPSS to examine the relationship between the three BOM domains and each of the validity measures, while controlling for child age, sex, and ethnicity.

Results (see Table 2) showed that positive behavior was positively associated with behavioral inhibition. Externalizing behavior was negatively associated with behavioral inhibition and interactive peer play. Externalizing behavior was also positively associated with aggression and hyperactive/inattentive behaviors in the classroom. Finally, internalizing behavior was positively associated with socially reticent behaviors seen in the classroom.

Overall, these results support the validity of the BOM tool, as the tool is associated with other measures of social-emotional skills as expected.

Authors

• Krystal Bichay, University of Miami
  Presenting Author

• Elizabeth Frechette, University of Miami
  Non-Presenting Author

• Rebecca Bulotsky-Shearer, University of Miami
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jhonelle Bailey, University of Miami
  Non-Presenting Author

• Silvia Niño, University of Miami
  Non-Presenting Author

• Daryl Greenfield, University of Miami
  Non-Presenting Author