Strengthening School Connectedness to Increase Student Success
Category: Student Well-Being
Instrument Overview
The Preschool Self-Regulation Assessment (PSRA) is a direct assessment designed to measure young children’s ability to manage their emotions, attention, and behavior in structured settings. It uses a short series of hands-on tasks and assessor observations to capture different aspects of self-regulation in preschool-aged children. The PSRA includes activities that assess impulse control, attention, and executive functioning—skills that help children follow directions, stay focused, and control their actions.
Developed for use with children ages three to five, the PSRA is often used in early learning and research settings to screen or monitor self-regulation skills that support school readiness and social-emotional development. Tasks are adapted from well-established laboratory measures but require minimal materials and can be administered in classroom or community settings by trained assessors. In addition to children’s task performance, assessors record observations of engagement, persistence, and emotional responses, providing a more complete picture of a child’s self-regulatory behavior.
Organization
Topic
Collection Category(ies)
Content
Grades
Pre-Kindergarten,
Kindergarten,
1st Grade,
2nd Grade,
3rd Grade,
4th Grade,
5th Grade,
6th Grade,
7th Grade,
8th Grade,
9th Grade,
10th Grade,
11th Grade,
12th Grade
Languages
English,
Spanish
Respondent
Observer
Administration Information
Length
10 tasks
Qualifications
Certified assessor
Access and Use
Developer
Radiah Smith-Donald (University of Chicago)
Price
Free
Contact
radiah@uchicago.edu (R. Smith-Donald)
cybele@uchicago.edu (C.C. Raver)
Open Access
Yes
Psychometrics (additional guidance)
Psychometric References
Smith-Donald, R., Raver, C. C., Hayes, T., & Richardson, B. (2007).
Preliminary construct and concurrent validity of the Preschool Self-Regulation Assessment (PRSA) for field-based research. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 22, 173–187.
Item Type
Task
Populations of Validation
"Two Head Starts in Chicago were selected as demonstration sites from the set of sites surveyed for the Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP). One site serves communities comprised largely of Hispanic families while the second site serves communities which are majority Black. Eighty-eight children aged 41–70 months were recruited for the pilot study. Of these, 64 (73%) children were consented by their parents to participate. One child completed the assessment over 2 days due to the family’s scheduling difficulties and thus was eliminated from data analyses. Therefore, complete data was collected for 63 children (54% girls, n = 34; 46% boys, n = 29; age M = 60.5 months, SD = 7.03) across both sites. The majority of participating children were Black or Hispanic (67% Hispanic, 25% Black, 5% Biracial, and 3% Other). Hispanic children were over-represented and White children were underrepresented as compared to Head Start enrollment across the nation: Hispanic, 31.2%; Black 31.1%; White, 26.9%; Multi-Racial/Other = 5% (ACF, 2005). Families were struggling financially with mean monthly income of $1392 which translates into an annual income of $16,705. In addition, 86% of families had only 1 adult living in the home."
