The study examined the psychometric properties of the Children’s Emotional Adjustment Scale–Preschool Version (CEAS-P), a new behavioral rating scale completed by parents. The scale measures preschoolers’ emotional functioning across three competency-based factors (Temper control, Social assertiveness, Anxiety control) anchored on healthy emotional development. In two independent community samples, mothers of 231 and 802 children aged 3 to 5 years answered the CEAS-P and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis supported the proposed factor structure. Scores on the CEAS-P factors were found to have satisfactory reliability (α = .88-.93) and acceptable concurrent validity with the SDQ. Temper control showed the highest correlation with SDQ Conduct problems (r = −.66), whereas Social assertiveness and Anxiety control evidenced the highest correlations with SDQ Emotional symptoms (r = −.45 and r = −.59, respectively). The findings suggest that the CEAS-P can be used to measure preschoolers’ emotional competence and may benefit researchers and practitioners examining normal as well as abnormal aspects of child mental health and development.
AchenbachT. M.RescorlaL. A. (2000). Manual for the ASEBA preschool forms & profiles [Assessment instrument]. Burlington: Research Center for Children, Youth and Families, University of Vermont.
BrowneM. W.CudeckR. (1993). Alternative ways of assessing model fit. Sociological Methods & Research, 21, 230-258. doi:10.1177/0049124192021002005
4.
CaiL.Du ToitS. H. C.ThissenD. (2011). IRTPRO Version 2.1 for Windows [Computer software]. Chicago, IL: Scientific Software International.
5.
CampbellS. B.DenhamS. A.HowarthG. Z.JonesS. M.WhittakerJ. V.WillifordA. P.. . . Darling-ChurchillK. (2016). Commentary on the review of measures of early childhood social and emotional development: Conceptualization, critique, and recommendations. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 45, 19-41. doi:10.1016/j.appdev.2016.01.008
6.
ChorpitaB. F.YimL.MoffittC.UmemotoL. A.FrancisS. E. (2000). Assessment of symptoms of DSM-IV anxiety and depression in children: A Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 38, 835-855. doi:10.1016/s0005-7967(99)00130-8
7.
DenhamS. A. (2006). Social-emotional competence as support for school readiness: What is it and how do we assess it?Early Education and Development, 17, 57-89. doi:10.1207/s15566935eed1701_4
8.
DenhamS. A.FerrierD. E.HowarthG. Z.HerndonK. J.BassettH. H. (2016). Key considerations in assessing young children’s emotional competence. Cambridge Journal of Education, 46, 299-317. doi:10.1080/0305764x.2016.1146659
9.
EisenbergN.MorrisA. S. (2002). Children’s emotion-related regulation. In KailR. V. (Ed.), Advances in child development and behavior (Vol. 30, pp. 189-229). Boston, MA: Academic Press. doi:10.1016/s0065-2407(02)80042-8
10.
EisenbergN.SpinradT. L.EggumN. D. (2010). Emotion-related self-regulation and its relation to children’s maladjustment. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 6, 495-525. doi:10.1146/annurev.clinpsy.121208.131208
11.
FabesR. A.GaertnerB. M.PoppT. K. (2006). Getting along with others: Social competence in early childhood. In McCartneyK.PhillipsD. (Eds.), Blackwell handbook of early childhood development (pp. 296-316). Oxford, UK: Blackwell. doi:10.1002/9780470757703.ch15
12.
FloraD. B.CurranP. J. (2004). An empirical evaluation of alternative methods of estimation for confirmatory factor analysis with ordinal data. Psychological Methods, 9, 466-491. doi:10.1037/1082-989x.9.4.466
13.
GoldsteinS.BrooksR. B. (Eds.). (2013). Handbook of resilience in children (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Springer.
14.
GoodmanA.LampingD. L.PloubidisG. B. (2010). When to use broader internalising and externalising subscales instead of the hypothesised five subscales on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ): Data from British parents, teachers and children. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 38, 1179-1191. doi:10.1007/s10802-010-9434-x
15.
GoodmanR. (1997). The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire: A research note. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 38, 581-586. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.1997.tb01545.x
16.
GudmundssonE. (2009). Guidelines for translating and adapting psychological instruments. Nordic Psychology, 61, 29-45. doi:10.1027/1901-2276.61.2.29
17.
HerndonK. J.BaileyC. S.ShewarkE. A.DenhamS. A.BassettH. H. (2013). Preschoolers’ emotion expression and regulation: Relations with school adjustment. The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 174, 642-663. doi:10.1080/00221325.2012.759525
18.
HuL. T.BentlerP. M. (1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 6, 1-55. doi:10.1080/10705519909540118
19.
HumphreyN.KalamboukaA.WigelsworthM.LendrumA.DeightonJ.WolpertM. (2011). Measures of social and emotional skills for children and young people: A systematic review. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 71, 617-637. doi:10.1177/0013164410382896
20.
IBM Corp. (2013). IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows Version 22.0 [Computer software]. Armonk, NY: Author.
21.
IzardC.StarkK.TrentacostaC.SchultzD. (2008). Beyond emotion regulation: Emotion utilization and adaptive functioning. Child Development Perspectives, 2, 156-163. doi:10.1111/j.1750-8606.2008.00058.x
22.
JonesS. M.ZaslowM.Darling-ChurchillK. E.HalleT. G. (2016). Assessing early childhood social and emotional development: Key conceptual and measurement issues. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 45, 42-48. doi:10.1016/j.appdev.2016.02.008
23.
LeBuffeP. A.NaglieriJ. A. (1999). Devereux Early Childhood Assessment: Technical manual [Assessment instrument]. Lewisville, NC: Kaplan Press.
24.
MuthénB.KaplanD.HollisM. (1987). On structural equation modeling with data that are not missing completely at random. Psychometrika, 42, 431-462. doi:10.1007/bf02294365
25.
MuthénL.MuthénB. (2012). Mplus version 7.11. Los Angeles, CA: Author.
26.
NeisworthJ. T.BagnatoS. J.SilviaS. J.HuntF. (1999). Temperament and Atypical Behavior Scale (TABS): Early childhood indicators of developmental dysfunction: TABS assessment and intervention manual [Assessment instrument]. Baltimore, MD: Brookes.
27.
O’ConnorB. P. (2000). SPSS and SAS programs for determining the number of components using parallel analysis and Velicer’s MAP test. Behavior Research Methods, Instrumentation, & Computers, 32, 396-402. doi:10.3758/bf03200807
28.
ReynoldsC. R.KamphausR. W. (2015). Behavior Assessment System for Children, Third Edition (BASC-3). Bloomington, MN: Pearson.
29.
RothbartM. K.AhadiS. A.HersheyK. L.FisherP. (2001). Investigations of temperament at three to seven years: The Children’s Behavior Questionnaire. Child Development, 72, 1394-1408. doi:10.1111/1467-8624.00355
30.
RubinK. H.CoplanR. J.BowkerJ. C. (2009). Social withdrawal in childhood. Annual Review of Psychology, 60, 141-171. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.60.110707.163642
31.
SaarniC. (1999). The development of emotional competence. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Southam-GerowM. A.KendallP. C. (2002). Emotion regulation and understanding: Implications for child psychopathology and therapy. Clinical Psychology Review, 22, 189-222. doi:10.1016/s0272-7358(01)00087-3
34.
SpenceS. H.RapeeR.McDonaldC.IngramM. (2001). The structure of anxiety symptoms among preschoolers. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 39, 1293-1316. doi:10.1016/s0005-7967(00)00098-x
35.
StoneL. L.JanssensJ. M.VermulstA. A.Van Der MatenM.EngelsR. C.OttenR. (2015). The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire: Psychometric properties of the parent and teacher version in children aged4-7. BMC Psychology, 3(1), Article 4. doi:10.1186/s40359-015-0061-8
36.
StoneL. L.OttenR.EngelsR. C.VermulstA. A.JanssensJ. M. (2010). Psychometric properties of the parent and teacher versions of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire for 4- to 12-year-olds: A review. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 13, 254-274. doi:10.1007/s10567-010-0071-2
37.
TabachnickB. G.FidellL. S. (2007). Using multivariate statistics (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.
38.
ThorlaciusÖ.GudmundssonE. (2015). Assessment of children’s emotional adjustment: Construction and validation of a new instrument. Child: Care, Health and Development, 41, 762-771. doi:10.1111/cch.12214
39.
TrentacostaC. J.ShawD. S. (2009). Emotional self-regulation, peer rejection, and antisocial behavior: Developmental associations from early childhood to early adolescence. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 30, 356-365. doi:10.1016/j.appdev.2008.12.016
40.
VanderVenK. (2008). Promoting positive development in early childhood: Building blocks for a successful start. New York, NY: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-0-387-79922-3
41.
van de VijverF. J.LeungK. (1997). Methods and data analysis for cross-cultural research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
42.
WeinerI. B.LernerR. M.EasterbrooksM. A.MistryJ. (2012). Handbook of psychology, Vol. 6: Developmental psychology (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley. doi:10.1002/9781118133880
43.
WessingI.RehbeinM. A.RomerG.AchtergardeS.DobelC.ZwitserloodP.. . . JunghöferM. (2015). Cognitive emotion regulation in children: Reappraisal of emotional faces modulates neural source activity in a frontoparietal network. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 13, 1-10. doi:10.1016/j.dcn.2015.01.012
44.
WrightM. O. D.MastenA. S.NarayanA. J. (2013). Resilience processes in development: Four waves of research on positive adaptation in the context of adversity. In GoldsteinS.BrooksR. E. (Eds.), Handbook of resilience in children (pp. 15-37). New York, NY: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-1-4614-3661-4_2
45.
ZwickW. R.VelicerW. F. (1986). Comparison of five rules for determining the number of components to retain. Psychological Bulletin, 99, 432-442. doi:10.1037//0033-2909.99.3.432
