Student Well-Being and Mental Health

The 18-item Classroom Climate Scale measures three components of students' or teachers' perceptions of their classroom climate: student-student relationships, student-teacher relationships, and awareness/reporting. Respondents are asked to indicate the extent to which they agree or disagree with a series of declarative statements.

The School Belongingness Scale (SBS) is a 10-item measure of students' sense of belonging in the school as a whole as well as their relationships with teachers and peers. The measure includes items related to "Social Exclusion" and "Social Acceptance."

The Student Engagement Instrument (SEI) is a 35-item (secondary) or 31-items (elementary) instrument that measures various components of student engagement, including teacher-student relationships which may provide insights into students' sense of belonging at school.

The Social Connectedness Scale includes 8 items and measures students' sense of connectedness, affiliation, and companionship to provide a broad picture of belongingness. The authors have an accompanying Social Assurance scale (which measures students' sense of companionship and affiliation) often administered in tandem with the Social Connectedness Scale.

The SSP, available in both English and Spanish, is an online survey questionnaire with 195 multiple-choice items. These items address students’ beliefs about their social environment—neighborhoods, schools, friends, and families—and about their own physical and psychological health and school performance (individual adaptation). The survey is divided into six modules: About You (6 items), Neighborhood (26 items), School (54 items), Friends (25 items), Family (45 items), and Health and Well-Being (39 items).

The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) is a school-based longitudinal study of a nationally representative sample of adolescents in grades 7-12 in the United States in 1994-95 that includes several items related to students' sense of belonging (e.g., “I feel like I am part of this school” and “I feel close to people at this school”).

The Sense of Social Fit Scale is a 17-item measure that assesses how much a person feels they belong in a group, such as a school, club, or academic department.

The Identification with School Questionnaire includes 16 Likert-scale items assessing students' identification with or disidentification from school.

The Psychological Sense of School Membership includes 18-items that measure adolescent students' perceived belonging or psychological membership in the school environment.

The full 78-item Hemingway includes 15 ecological subscales measuring three domains of adolescent connectedness - connectedness to self, connectedness to others, and connectedness to society. 

The Infant/Toddler Environment Rating Scale (ITERS) measures the environmental quality of childcare programs for children up to 30 months old. The instrument was originally developed in 1990 and is now offered in a revised version (Infant/Toddler Environment Rating Scale-Revised, ITERS-R). The 39 items of ITERS-R focus on the following seven domains: space and furnishings, personal care routines, listening and talking, activities, interaction, program structure, and parents and staff. ITERS-R is suitable for inclusive and culturally diverse settings.

The Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS) is an assessment of classroom quality measuring environmental provisions and teacher-child interactions affecting the developmental needs of preschool- and kindergarten-aged children. The third edition of the assessment, ECERS-3, includes 35 items focusing on the following six domains: space and furnishings, personal care routines, language and literacy, learning activities, interaction, and program structure. ECERS may be used to evaluate inclusive and culturally diverse educational settings. 

Indicators of Individual Growth and Development for Infants and Toddlers (IGDI) measure development outcomes for children between 6 and 42 months. IGDI assessments are evaluations of 6-minute play sessions with the child and require the use of a set of toys in addition to administration materials. IGDI assessments can be conducted live during the play session, based on a video recording of the play session, or by observing the play session virtually.

The Ages & Stages Questionnaire (ASQ) is a screening instrument that measures developmental performance in young children aged 1 month-5.5 years. Early childhood educators and healthcare professionals use ASQ to collect information from parents on children’s development in five domains: communication, gross motor skills, fine motor skills, problem solving, and personal-social skills.  The most recent version of ASQ as of 2022 is ASQ-3, the third edition of the instrument. ASQ-3 offers 21 parent/caregiver questionnaires that are used depending on the child's age.

The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) is a parent-focused instrument measuring the communicative development of children aged 8-37 months. CDI allows professionals to screen and develop prognoses for language delays by tapping into parents’ knowledge of their children’s language skills, starting from early comprehension to early vocabulary and grammar expansion.

The Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development (BSID) measures the development of infants and young children (aged 16 days-42 months). Conducted by trained examiners, BSID includes several developmental play tasks to assess cognitive, language, motor, social-emotional, and adaptive behavior development. BSID’s most recent fourth version was created in 2019.

The Scale for Teachers’ Assessment of Routines Engagement (STARE) documents teachers’ perspectives of a child’s engagement in classroom activities. Suitable for both typically developing children and children with disabilities, STARE focuses on how much time the child was engaged with adults, peers, and materials (toys, art supplies, environment in general). In addition, STARE explores how complex the engagement was. STARE is completed after a specific classroom activity and takes about 20 seconds. The STARE can be completed as frequently as necessary. 

Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales Third Edition (Vineland-3) is an instrument for diagnosing intellectual and developmental disabilities and planning treatment. Vineland-3 focuses on the following domains of adaptive behavior: 1) communication, 2) daily living skills, and 3) socialization. Vineland-3 offers the Survey Interview Form for conducting semi-structured interviews with parents or caregivers, the Parent/Caregiver Rating Forms questionnaire (can be used for all ages), and the Teacher Rating Form (can be used for ages 3-21).

Goal Attainment Scales (GAS) offer an approach to evaluate changes in the academic and social behaviors of students. The GAS methodology is individualized and criterion-referenced and consists of three steps: 1) selecting a target academic outcome or behavior, 2) describing the target academic outcome or behavior, 3) developing 3-5 descriptions of the target academic outcome or behavior ranging from the least to most favorable. Each description is assigned a numerical rating that allows the scale to be used for ongoing monitoring and reporting of student progress.

The Social Networks and Friendship Survey asks participants to indicate their friends in the classroom. From this list, children are asked to identify the top 3 friends by marking them with a star. The survey also asks children to indicate “rejects” or children with whom they don’t like to hang out.

The School Implementation Climate Scale (SICS) assesses the school’s climate with regard to the strategic implementation of evidence-based practices (EBP). The scale examines seven constructs: focus on EBP, educational support for EBP, recognition for EBP, rewards for EBP, use of data to support EBP, existing supports to deliver EBP, and integration of EBP. SICS items are Likert-scale ranging from 0 (“not at all”) to 4 ("very great extent").

The Friendship Quality Scale is a 23-item questionnaire measuring children’s and young adolescents’ friendship quality. It quantifies their self-reported perceptions of five aspects of their bond with a best friend: companionship, conflict, help/aid, security, and closeness. The scale has 23 items using a 5-point Likert scale from 1 (never) to 5 (always).

UCLA Loneliness Scale-3 is an instrument measuring self-reported subjective feelings of loneliness and social isolation. Its 20 items use a Likert-type rating scale ranging from 1 (never) to 4 (always).

The Social Skills Q-Sort (SSQ) is an instrument quantifying a child’s comprehensive social skills profile using 100 descriptive cards. Observers sort the SSQ cards into 9 piles (from least characteristic in pile 1 to most characteristic in pile 9).

The Tiered Fidelity Inventory (TFI) is an instrument measuring to what extent school personnel use (or need) school-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports (SWPBIS). The three tiers in TFI are 1) universal SWPBIS features, 2) targeted SWPBIS features, and 3) intensive SWPBIS features. The scoring of each item in TFI ranges from 0 to 2 (0 not implemented, 1 partially implemented, 2 fully implemented.)

The Playground Observation of Peer Engagement (POPE) is an observation-based instrument measuring children’s engagement in activities and with peers in naturalistic environments. It focuses on the time children spend in various engagement states and the frequency of their social engagement states and behaviors (games and conversations, parallel play, observing others, and solitary play). 

The Social Emotional Survey-Secondary (SEHS-S) is a 36-item self-report measure of students’ social and emotional strengths. The 12 subscales (each consisting of three items) are associated with four domains of positive social-emotional health: belief in self, belief in others, emotional competence, and engaged living. These four correlated domains assess the higher-order construct of covitality. The SEHS-2020 is the most recent validated version.

The Comprehensive School Climate Inventory (CSCI) is a nationally-recognized and empircally validated school climate survey that provides an in-depth profile of your school community’s particular strengths, as well as areas for improvement. With the CSCI, you can quickly and accurately assess student, parent/ guardian, and school personnel perceptions in order to get the data that you need to make informed decisions for lasting improvement. The CSCI measures thirteen essential dimensions of a healthy school climate in five broad categories: Safety, Teaching and Learning, Interpersonal Relationships, Social Media, Institutional Environment, as well as two distinct dimensions for personnel only.

The Delaware School Climate Survey-Student Version is a brief survey that measures student feelings about school climate across several subdomains (which include Social and Emotional Competencies, Classroom Management Techniques, Bullying, and Engagement). Parent/Guardian and teacher versions of the Delaware School Climate Survey are also available for implementation.

The Georgia Brief School Climate Inventory (GaBSCI) is a 9-item measure of students' perceptions of school climate across three dimensions (safety, teaching and learning, and relationships within the school).