ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Positive Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1574923
This article is part of the Research TopicAssessing Well-being From the Third World: Psychometric Developments From Non-WEIRD CountriesView all 7 articles
Development and Psychometric Properties of Chinese Social Emotional Competence Measurements
Provisionally accepted
- 1Penguin Art with SEL Research Centre, Beijing, China
- 2Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai, China
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The current study aimed to develop and validate Chinese versions of two Social Emotional Competence measurements: the Chinese version of the Social Emotional Competence Questionnaire (C-SECQ) and the Chinese version of the Social-Emotional Learning Scale (C-SELS). We recruited two separate Chinese university student samples for a preliminary psychometric analysis (Study 1, N = 195) and an independent sample validation (Study 2, N = 540). The findings revealed that: (1) The C-SECQ demonstrated high internal consistency reliability and evidence of good construct validity in Chinese university student samples. (2) Exploratory factor analysis of the C-SELS in Study 1 suggested a new threefactor model (Emotional and Social Awareness, Goal Setting and Problem Solving, Emotional Regulation and Responsibility). However, subsequent validation of this new C-SELS model in Study 2 indicated limited convergent and discriminant validity, suggesting that this revised model requires further substantial investigation and refinement. Crosscultural interpretations of the emergent C-SELS three-factor model are discussed. This research contributes to the availability of SEL assessment tools in the Chinese context, highlighting the C-SECQ as a promising measure and underscoring the complexities of adapting and validating the C-SELS.
Keywords: Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), social and emotional competence, SEL measurement, SEL scale, Chinese college students
Received: 11 Feb 2025; Accepted: 10 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Tan, Wang, Xiao, Jing, Chen and Yao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Zhen-Dong Wang, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai, China
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