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INFORMATION FOR

SEL Assessments

Studies that support the development and validation of SEL assessments at the child and youth, adult, classroom, and school level.

Our SEL Assessments research focuses on four main areas: Adults, Children and Youth, Classroom, and Schools.

Adults: Adult Emotional Intelligence Test: Development and Validation

Team Members: James Floman, Marc Brackett, Annette Ponnock, Hannah Asis, Chris Cipriano, Signal Barsade (Wharton) Matthew LaPalme, Peihao Luo, Alessandra Yu

This project aims to develop, validate, and publish a new measure of emotional intelligence for adults. The multi-component assessment will include tests of emotion expression recognition, understanding emotions, and regulating emotions. A second aim of this project is to measure whether the new test explains incremental variance in satisfaction with life, anxiety/depression, academic achievement, prosocial behavior, self-compassion, and peer-rated interpersonal status, among other outcomes, compared to prior measures of emotional intelligence. All study measures will be conducted in an online format and consists of standard questions and assessments pertaining to emotional awareness, personality, and self-reports. The test will treat emotional intelligence as a set of abilities. There will be three sections:

  • The Subtle Multimodal Affect Recognition Test (SMART): This assessment tests the ability to perceive emotions through facial, vocal, and bodily cues and also assesses how well individuals can recognize hidden or masked emotions.
  • The Emotion Understanding Test (EUT): This assessment test the ability to understand emotion language; this includes: 1) the ability to differentiate among emotion words and to use emotion language with granularity, 2) the ability to understand the root causes of emotions, and 3) the ability to understand the relationship between families of emotion words.
  • The Emotion Regulation Test (ERT): This assessment is a situation judgment test (SJT) that uses a vignette-based paradigm to assess the ability to regulate emotions in the self and others. Each vignette describes a situation at work where participants are asked to think about how they would regulate their emotions or the emotions of others. This assessment is currently in development and validation and will be complete by the Summer of 2021.

Contact

Contact the team at yaleewbsel@yale.edu.

Adults: Teacher Well-Being and SEL Implementation Project

Funding Source: Wend Ventures

Team Members: Marc Brackett, James Floman, Chris Cipriano, Michael Strambler (The Consultation Center at Yale), Joanna Meyer (The Consultation Center at Yale), Maegan Genovese (The Consultation Center at Yale), Annette Ponnock, Almut Zieher, Linda Torv, Hannah Asis, Alessandra Yu, Beatris Garcia</>

This project is a three-year investigation of educator emotional well-being and social and emotional learning implementation fidelity by the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence (YCEI) in partnership with The Consultation Center at Yale. Over the course of the project period, the project team will:

  • design, validate, and make widely available a measure of educator well-being;
  • design, validate, and make widely available a measure of educator social-emotional learning (SEL) program implementation fidelity (to gauge associations and potential interaction effects between SEL implementation and well-being); and
  • develop an accompanying set of resources to help schools improve teacher well-being (as driven by survey results).

The combination of enhanced measurement and actionable resources will raise awareness among school leaders and policymakers about the state of teacher well-being and engagement and of steps that can be taken to improve it.

Contact

Contact the team at yaleewbsel@yale.edu.

Conferences

  • Cipriano, C. (Chair, 2020). "The Development and Initial Validation of Four Ecologically Valid,Multi-Dimensional, and Scalable SEL Assessment Tools. Symposium to be presented at the American Educational Research Association Meeting in San Francisco, California (Cancelled due to COVID-19).
  • Cipriano, C., Floman, J., Hoffmann, J., & Willner, C. (2019). Building the Assessments We Need: The Development of new actionable SEL data-points for teachers. CASEL SEL Exchange, Chicago, IL

Media

  • Brackett, M. & Cipriano, C. (2020). Teachers are Anxious and Overwhelmed: They Need SEL Now More Than Ever. Ed Surge, Published April 7, 2020
  • Cipriano,C., & Brackett. M. (2020). How to Support Teachers’ Emotional Needs Right Now, Great Good Science Center. Published April 30, 2020
  • Cipriano, C., Naples, L.H., & Eveleigh, A. (2020). Feeling Overwhelmed and Overlooked, Special Educators

Publications

  • Hamilton, L.S. & Doss, C.J. (2020) Supports for Social and Emotional Learning in American Schools and Classrooms: Findings from the American Teacher Panel. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA397-1.html.
  • Strambler, M.J., Meyer, J.L., Zieher, A.K., & Genovese, M.A. (2020). Surveying Educators about Social Emotional Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic. New Haven, CT: The Consultation Center at Yale. https://osf.io/ekr2h/
  • Zieher, A. K. Cipriano, C., Meyers, J., & Strambler, M. (2021). Educators’ implementation and use of social and emotional learning early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of School Psychology, Online First

Adults: Development of the Objective Awareness and Mindfulness Measure for Teachers (OAMM-T)

Funding Source: Mind & Life Institute (PEACE Grant)

Team Members: Almut Zieher, Kylie Anglin (University of Connecticut), and Corissa Mazurkiewicz (Pacific University)

The OAMM-T will be an objective self-report measure designed to measure teacher mindfulness and awareness within the classroom context. The OAMM-T will support researchers in better understanding the nature of teacher’s awareness of external (e.g., student, classroom) and internal (e.g., emotions, thoughts, body sensations) sources of information. Additionally, it will support research to explore how mindfulness and other social and emotional interventions change the nature of teacher’s awareness and how the nature of their awareness relates to their well-being, classroom behaviors, and their student’s experiences and success. With this increased knowledge, the OAMM-T will also be able to support teachers in recognizing changes in their own awareness, including feedback to support development of teacher’s awareness and mindfulness to enhance the classroom environment.

In Year 1 (2023) we will collect teacher classroom recall data and, with a contemplative expert panel, we will develop a codebook and score the teacher recall data.

In Year 2 (2024) we will conduct psychometric analysis and use natural language processing and machine learning to automate the scoring process.

Get Involved

Visit our enrollment page or contact our team at OAMM@yale.edu.

Schools: School Climate Walkthrough

Team Members: Jessica Hoffmann, Marc Brackett, Chris Cipriano, Julie McGarry, Jennifer Seibyl, Kalee DeFrance, Sean McFarland, Elinor Hills, Rachel Baumsteiger

The School Climate Walkthrough is a web-based school climate assessment tool for secondary schools. Students complete “the Walkthrough” in two parts over the course of a typical school day - 15 minutes in the morning, answering questions about their overall opinions of their school, and 15 minutes in the afternoon, completing a checklist of their observations from that day at school. The tool offers instantaneous scoring and a digital report covering nine domains of school climate including safety, relationships, teaching quality, and respect for diversity. Results of the survey are automatically displayed once all participants submit their responses and are interpretable by the students themselves. Interactive features of the report allow users to explore overall scores as well as any areas in which various demographic groups of students may be reporting significantly disparate experiences.

The app can be used by students, educators, and leaders to start taking action towards positive change in their school communities, and school climate domains are aligned with potential project ideas and actionable steps available in the inspirED resource libraries: activities and projects.

Want to get involved? The School Climate Walkthrough team is currently recruiting schools interested in using our new survey tool. Participating schools will ask students to complete the School Climate Walkthrough, through our web-based app on a typical school day. Participating schools will receive a full school climate report and a complementary remote consultation session to support interpretation and next steps. More information on how to get started can be found here.

Get Involved

Please visit our enrollment page to learn more about getting involved in this study.

Publications

  • Hoffmann, J. D., Baumsteiger, R., Seibyl, J., Hills, E., Bradley, C., Cipriano, C., & Brackett, M. A. (2022). Building useful, web-based educational measures for students, with students: An illustrative demonstration with The School Climate Walkthrough Tool for high schools. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice.

Presentations

  • Baumsteiger, R. & De France, K. (2022, July). Adolescents' affective experiences: The influence of home, school, technology, and a school-based program [Conference Symposium]. International Society for Research on Emotion Annual Meeting, Los Angeles, CA.
  • Hoffmann, J. D., Baumsteiger, R., & Seibyl, J. (2022, April). School Climate Walkthrough measure: A validation study [Paper presentation]. American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, San Diego.
  • Hoffmann, J. D., Baumsteiger, R., & Seibyl, J. (August, 2021). The School Climate Walkthrough: A tool for understanding school climate in secondary schools [Poster presentation]. American Psychological Association Annual Convention, Virtual.
  • Seibyl, J., Baumsteiger, R., & Hoffmann, J. (2021, August). Same School, Different Experience: Exploring Group Differences Through School Climate Profile Analyses [Poster presentation]. American Psychological Association Annual Meeting, Virtual.
  • Hoffmann, J. D., Baumsteiger, R., McGarry, J., Seibyl, J., Brackett, M.A. (April, 2021). How to Create More Useful Measures: The Development of a Web-based Application for Assessing School Climate in Secondary Schools. In J. Montgomery (Chair). Innovative Approaches to Measuring Social Emotional Learning. Presentation at the American Educational Research Association annual convention.
  • Hoffmann, J.D. (2019, November). The Importance of a Person-centered Approach to Measuring School Climate: Raising Every Student’s Voice. Presentation at the International Bullying Prevention Association Conference, Chicago, IL.
  • Cipriano, C., Floman, J., Hoffmann, J., & Willner, C. (2019, October). Building the Assessments We Need: The Development of new actionable SEL data-points for teachers. CASEL SEL Exchange, Chicago, IL.
  • Bradley, C. Hoffmann, J. D. & McGarry, J. (2019, March). A Person-Centered Approach to Measuring School Climate: Capturing Between- and Within-School Variability in Student Experiences. Poster presentation at the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Washington, DC.

Classroom: Development and Validation of the Social and Emotional Learning Observation Checklist for Elementary School (SELOC-ES)

Funding Source: Institute of Education Sciences

Team Members: Chris Cipriano, Almut Zieher, Craig Bailey, Michael Strambler (The Consultation Center, Yale University), Famatta Gibson, Krista Smith

The SELOC-ES will be an observation tool for elementary classrooms specifically designed to capture SEL pedagogy that enhances student learning. The SELOC-ES will support practitioners and researchers to: (1) measure discrete theoretically-supported pedagogies fostered by effective SEL curricula; (2) identify key growth areas in practice to support teacher SEL instruction and promote best practice in the delivery of SEL curricula, and (3) understand how these practices are associated with student social, behavioral, and academic outcomes. The SELOC-ES will directly assess SEL pedagogy in elementary schools (K-5) using a multi-method, multi-informant observational design.

The SELOC-ES will be developed through a mixed-methods design grounded in action research to support the resulting tool’s immediate practical utility within school, state, and district assessment frameworks.

In Year 1 (2021-22) we will engage in the following research activities to refine the SEL Pedagogy Framework and inform development of initial SELOC-ES items. Conduct a content analysis of evidence-based elementary school SEL curricula to identify the key processes and activities of SEL pedagogy in elementary school classrooms

  • Conduct strategic classroom observations and interviews with 12 experienced SEL School Leaders (SLs) and 12 K-5 teachers from diverse school districts across the country.
  • Convene an advisory board of SEL experts.

In Year 2 (2022-23) we will conduct basic feasibility-testing with 24 SLs and 24 teachers to refine draft items and create the SELOC-ES observation system and get feedback from our advisory board of SEL experts.

In Year 3 (2023-24) we will pilot the SELOC-ES to establish initial evidence of psychometric properties and refine the observation tool and system alongside 50 SLs and 300 classrooms across the country. We will also conduct a cost analysis of SELOC-ES implementation to inform dissemination.

In Year 4 (2024-25) we will work with the advisory panel and SLs to share the final tool for immediate adoption by schools and school districts to support effective SEL implementation and professional development.

Get Involved

Visit our enrollment page or contact yaleseloc@yale.edu.

Classroom: Refinement and Validation of the RELATE Tool for Inclusive Classroom Observation

Funding Source: William T. Grant Foundation and Institute of Education Sciences

Team Members: Tia Barnes (University of Delaware), Chris Cipriano, Zachary Collier (University of Delaware), Henry May (University of Delaware), & Nathan Jones (Boston University)
To date, much work on developing and validating classroom observation measures has focused on general education classrooms with little to no focus on students with disabilities (SWDs). In recent years, there has been increased interest in observation protocols for classrooms serving students with disabilities.

The RELATE Tool was developed to fill the need for a valid classroom observation tool designed for capturing the social processes unique in self-contained special education classrooms (e.g., teacher-paraeducator interactions, accommodations, prevention and de-escalation of disruptive behavior). The RELATE Tool is part of a suite of resources offered and investigated through the RELATE Project.

For more information, please email Christina Cipriano or visit the Relate Project website.

Publications

  • Cipriano, C., Rivers, S., & Bertoli, M. (2015) Mind the gap: Accountability, observation, and special education. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy, and Practice. 10.1080/0969594X.2015.1114913
  • Cipriano, C., Barnes, T., Bertoli, M., Flynn, L., & Rivers, S. (2016). There is no “I” in team: Understanding teacher-paraeducator interactions in special education classrooms. Journal of Classroom Interactions, 51(2).
  • Barnes, T. N., Cipriano, C., McCallops, K., Cuccini-Harmon, C., & Rivers, S. E. (2018) Examining the Relationship between Perceptions of Teaching Self-Efficacy, School Support, and Teachers’ and Paraeducators’ Burnout in a Residential School Setting. Emotional and Behavioral Difficulties. 10.1080/13632752.2018.1461452
  • Barnes, T. Cipriano, C., Flynn, L., Rivers, S., & Xu, W. (2018). Validating the Recognizing Excellence in Learning and Teaching (RELATE) Tool for Special Education Classrooms. Journal of Experimental Education. 10.1080/00220973.2018.1465383
  • Cipriano, C., Barnes, T., Bertoli, M., & Rivers, S. (2018). Applicability of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System in Special Education Classrooms Serving Students with Emotional Behavioral Disorders. Emotional and Behavioral Difficulties. 10.1080/13632752.2018.1461454.
  • Cipriano, C., & Barnes, T. N. (2015). Class, interrupted: Reactionary practices are not best practices in education. Education Week, Issue 14.
  • Barnes, T., Cipriano, C., Bertoli, M., Flynn, L., & Rivers, S. (2015). The Recognizing Excellence in Learning and Teaching (RELATE) Tool Classroom Observation Technical Manu
  • Cipriano, C., Barnes, T., Bertoli, M., Flynn, L., & Rivers, S., (2015) The RELATE Classroom Observation Research Extension (CORE). Yale University.
  • Barnes, T., Cipriano, C., Bertoli, M., Flynn, L., & Rivers, S. (2018). The Recognizing Excellence in Learning and Teaching (RELATE) Tool Classroom Observation Technical Manual. Yale University
  • Barnes, T., Cipriano, C., Xia, Y. (In Press) Relating in the Self-Contained Classroom: Best Practices for Cultivating Effective Teacher-Paraprofessional Collaboration. Beyond Behavior.
  • Cipriano, C., & Barnes, T. (Under Review). Observation of Special Education Classrooms by School Personnel. Learning Environment Research

Children and Youth: Student Emotion Regulation Assessment (SERA)

Team Members: Zi Jia Ng, Jessica Hoffmann, Craig Bailey, Chris Cipriano, Marc Brackett, Linda Torv, Beatris Garcia, Alexandra Harrison, Morgan Mannweiler, Cynthia Willner

This project is focused on the development and validation of the Student Emotion Regulation Assessment (SERA). The SERA is a new direct assessment that measures students’ use of various emotion regulation strategies (e.g., problem solving, emotional support-seeking, somatic relaxation, distraction, rumination, and experiencing the emotion) to deal with emotional situations that commonly occur in school. There are two versions of the SERA: the SERA-P for use with students in grades 1-5 and the SERA-S for use with students in grades 6-12. In both versions, students are presented with age-appropriate vignettes (see examples below) and asked how they would respond in these situations. Both versions are computer-based, illustrated, and narrated to enhance student engagement and accessibility.

The purpose of the SERA is to (1) enhance educators’ awareness and understanding of their students’ emotion regulation strategy use and competency; (2) increase adolescent students’ awareness of their own emotion regulation strategy use and knowledge of effective emotion regulation strategies; and (3) provide guidance to educators on how to support their students’ development of effective emotion regulation strategies in classroom settings. To meet these goals, we are conducting research to ensure that the SERA has strong psychometric quality, is feasible for schools to use, and has high utility.

Get Involved

Visit our enrollment page or contact the team at yale_sera@yale.edu.

Presentations

  • Ng, Z. J., Willner, C. J., & Mannweiler, M. D. (August 2021). The Student Emotion Regulation Assessment: A tool for measuring students' emotion regulation skills. Poster presented at the 2021 annual convention of the American Psychological Association (virtual conference).
  • Mannweiler, M. D., Willner, C. J., Harrison, A. P., Ng, Z., Hoffman, J. D., Bailey, C. S., Cipriano, C., Brackett, M. A. (August 2021). Age-related differences in students’ emotion regulation strategy endorsement patterns. Poster presented at the 2021 annual convention of the American Psychological Association (virtual conference).
  • Ng, Z. J., Willner, C. J., Cipriano, C., & Brackett, M. (April 2021). A review of emotion regulation assessment in schools. Poster presentation (virtual) at the 2021 biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development.
  • Mannweiler, M., Willner., C. J., Ng, Z. J., Hoffmann, J., & Brackett, M. (April 2021). Educators systematically over-predict student anxiety in response to hypothetical vignettes. Poster presentation (virtual) at the 2021 biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development.
  • Willner, C. J., Hoffmann, J. D., Bailey, C. S., Ng, Z. J., Harrison, A. P., Garcia, B., & Brackett, M. A. (April 2020). Developing an objective assessment of students' emotion regulation for use in elementary school through high school. Presentation accepted for the 2020 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA (conference canceled).
  • Willner, C. J. (2019). Directly assessing students’ emotion regulation skills in elementary school through high school. Presentation at the CASEL Social & Emotional Learning Exchange 2019, Chicago, IL.

Children and Youth: The Momentary Emotion Assessment Tool

Team Members: Kalee DeFrance, Chris Cipriano, Jessica Hoffmann, Cynthia Willner, Marc Brackett, Beatris Garcia, Rachel Baumsteiger, Violet Tan

The purpose of the Momentary Emotion Assessment Tool is to track how students feel and how they respond to their emotions at school. This tool could be used by researchers and educators to understand momentary emotions and how they change, and also to capture the effects of interventions designed to improve students’ experiences at school. The tool will also provide students with individual reports and in-the-moment feedback on how to improve their emotional experiences.

Schools will receive reports of similar information, but with results aggregated across students, and with resources for supporting students. Data collected through the process of validating this tool will contribute scientific insights to how adolescents’ momentary emotions vary across time, physical setting, activity, social company, and based on their responses to their emotions. These data can also be used to evaluate how emotional experiences differ across different students.

Get Involved

Are you interested in learning more about how your students feel at school and how to support their emotional well-being? The team is currently enrolling schools to test the Momentary Emotion Assessment Tool. To learn more, contact us at yalemea@yale.edu.

Presentations

  • Baumsteiger, R., Garcia, B., Cipriano, C., Hoffmann, J. D., Willner, C. J., & Brackett, M. A. (2020, January). How do teens feel at school? New directions for assessing momentary emotional experiences. Poster presented at the Western Positive Psychology Association Conference, Claremont.
  • Garcia, B., Baumsteiger, R., Hoffmann, J. D., & Brackett, M. A. (2020, April). Testing the directional influences between interpersonal relationships and emotion regulation: Support for a new approach. Poster presented at the annual Society for Affective Science Convention, San Francisco. (online)
  • Hoffmann, J. D., Baumsteiger, R., Hills, E. & Brackett, M. A. (2020, April). A web-based, student-centered approach to school climate measurement. In Cipriano, C. (Chair), The development and initial validation of four ecologically valid, multidimensional, and scalable SEL assessment tools [Symposium]. American Education Research Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA. (conference cancelled due to COVID)
  • Hoffmann, J. D., McGarry, J., & Baumsteiger, R. (2020, October). Tools for assessing and addressing adolescents’ emotional experiences at school [Workshop]. Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), Social & Emotional Learning (SEL) Exchange, Virtual. (conference cancelled due to COVID)
  • Baumsteiger, R., Willner, C., Hoffmann, J. D., Cipriano, C., Garcia, B., Tan, V., & Brackett, M. A. (2020, November). Adolescents’ emotions and emotion regulation during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Poster presented at the Yale Child Studies Center 2020 Associates Week.

Publications

  • Baumsteiger, R., Garcia, B., Cipriano, C., Hoffmann, J. D., Willner, C. J., & Brackett, M. A. (under review). Assessing adolescents’ momentary emotions and emotion regulation at school: A systematic review and future directions.

Toolkit: For a Digital SEAD (Social, Emotional, and Academic Development) and School Climate

The Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence is developing a suite of tools, strategies, and data points to assess the emotional health of schools. This work is funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

1. Adult Emotional Intelligence Test: Development and Validation

Team Members: James Floman, Marc Brackett, Annette Ponnock. Alessandra Yu, Beatris Garcia, Chris Cipriano, Sigal Barsade (Wharton) & Matthew LaPalme

Project Description: This project aims to develop, validate, and publish a new measure of emotional intelligence for adults. The multi-component assessment will include tests of emotion expression recognition, understanding emotions, and regulating emotions. A second aim of this project is to measure whether the new test explains incremental variance in satisfaction with life, anxiety/depression, academic achievement, prosocial behavior, self-compassion, and peer-rated interpersonal status, among other outcomes, compared to prior measures of emotional intelligence. All study measures will be conducted in an online format and comprised of standard questions and assessments pertaining to emotional awareness, personality, and self-reports. The test will treat emotional intelligence as a set of abilities. There will be three sections:

  • Emotion Perception
  • Emotion Understanding
  • Emotion Regulation

There will be six subsections, and approximately eight items per subsection for a total of 48 items.

Contact

For more information, email James Floman.

2. Assessment of Students’ Emotion Regulation

Team Members: Cynthia Willner, Jessica Hoffmann, Craig Bailey, Zi-Jia Ng, Alexandra Harrison, Beatris Garcia, Chris Cipriano, & Marc Brackett

Project Description: This project aims to develop and validate new assessments of students’ emotion regulation for use by educators of 1st through 12th grade students. The assessments will provide data on the strategies students use to manage anger, anxiety, sadness, and boredom in school. These computer-based assessments ask students to report how they would likely respond to specific emotional situations in school. The assessments will provide automatic data reports for educators on the kinds of emotion regulation strategies their students use (e.g., support-seeking, distraction, avoidance, reappraisal/reframing, etc.) and the overall adaptiveness of their emotion regulation strategy choices. We will also conduct research to establish age-level benchmarks for scores on these assessments.

Project Recruitment

The team is currently enrolling schools in the validation study. Interested in having your students try out our new assessments of student emotion regulation? Contact yceiresearch@yale.edu to learn more.

3. School Climate Walkthrough

Team Members: Jessica Hoffmann, Marc Brackett, Chris Cipriano, Kari Olsen, Julie McGarry, Jennifer Seibyl, & Rachel Baumsteiger

Project Description: The school climate walkthrough is a project to develop a web-based digital school climate assessment tool. This app is intended to be used by secondary school students to measure their school climate and take action on making positive change in their school communities. Students use the app to answer a series of school climate survey questions at the start and end of a single school day, creating a snapshot of their school climate across the domains of safety, relationships, environment, teaching quality, and social media. Results of the survey are automatically displayed once all participants submit their responses and are interpretable by the students themselves. Repeated use of the tool allows for tracking of school climate over time.

Project Recruitment

The School Climate Walkthrough team is currently recruiting schools interested in testing the survey. Participating schools will receive a full school climate report within two weeks of completing the survey and a complementary remote consultation to support interpretation and to gather feedback on ways to improve the measure. To sign up for more information and to get started, fill out the School Climate Walkthrough form.

4. The Momentary Emotion Assessment Tool

Team Members: Kalee De France, Rachel Baumsteiger, Beatris Garcia, Chris Cipriano, Jessica Hoffmann, Cynthia Willner, & Marc Brackett

Project Description: The purpose of the Momentary Emotion Assessment Tool is to benchmark students’ momentary emotions in regular classrooms and individualized learning settings, as well as compare both settings in terms of the emotions they elicit. This project will contribute scientific insights to the search for determinants of momentary emotions at school, develop brief in-the-moment interventions helping students to cope with their emotions at school, develop technology that assesses students’ momentary emotions, and provide students and teachers in-the-moment feedback about these emotions in innovative ways.

Project Recruitment

Interested in having your students learn about their momentary emotions? The team is currently enrolling schools to pilot the Momentary Emotion Assessment Tool and contribute to its development. Contact us at yalemea@yale.edu for more information.

Project Flourish

In the past 20 years, interest and investment in universal school-based social and emotional learning (SEL) has increased. This movement has been backed by national education policy, including the Every Study Succeeds Act of 2015 which requires schools to measure at least one indicator of student social, emotional, and behavioral health in addition to academic benchmarks.

As indicators of school quality beyond academics have come to the forefront, two needs have emerged: evidence-based interventions and rigorous assessments that can provide sound and useful feedback on the efficacy of social and emotional learning approaches.

While many new SEL approaches and assessments emerged in the last decade to fill these needs, historically marginalized students have not shared equally in the benefits. In some cases, these interventions, practices, and policies have contributed to inequalities, inaccessibility, and punitive educational practices that adversely impact minoritized youth. A recent review of universal school-based SEL found that nearly 75 percent of studies did not even report student race in their results.

Trajectory of Hope , The Urban Assembly , and the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence (YCEI) have come together to ensure that social and emotional learning approaches, and accompanying assessment tools , promote equity and to help identify and eliminate racism and other exclusionary practices in research, in programming, and in policy.

Project Objectives

  1. Science: Explore and understand how SEL assessment tools developed at the YCEI work independently and in concert with each other when applied by organizations in schools with the stated goals of identifying and dismantling student outcome disparities, systemic biases, and/or exclusionary practices. 2
  2. Practice: Identify how SEL assessment tools developed at the YCEI support ongoing and established practices of Urban Assembly and Trajectory of Hope in fostering school-wide social and emotional health. Determine what adaptations or refinements to the tools are necessary to deliver a fully accessible, scientifically rigorous, and useful suite of digital assessments.
  3. Policy: Provide proof of concept of tool integration with data-systems native to schools in two different models – those of Urban Assembly and Trajectory of Hope - that will help these organizations become leaders in this space and yield information to make impactful policy statements regarding the resources, services, and staffing necessary to use tools and incorporate data in decision-making.

Assessment Tools

The YCEI-designed tools for schools included in this study are psychometrically sound, accessible, and pragmatic. They incorporate diversity in stimuli, samples, and design to address exclusionary practices in research.

School Climate Walkthrough

The School Climate Walkthrough is a web-based school climate assessment tool for secondary schools. Students complete “the Walkthrough” in two parts over the course of a typical school day - 15 minutes in the morning, answering questions about their overall opinions of their school, and 15 minutes in the afternoon, completing a checklist of their observations from that day at school.
Learn more

Momentary Emotion Assessment (MEA)

The Momentary Emotion Assessment Tool tracks how students feel and how they respond to their emotions at school. This tool could be used by researchers and educators to understand momentary emotions and how they change, and to capture the effects of interventions designed to improve students’ experiences at school.
Learn more

Student Emotion Regulation Assessment (SERA)

The SERA is a direct assessment that measures students’ use of various emotion regulation strategies (e.g., problem solving, emotional support-seeking, somatic relaxation, distraction, rumination, and experiencing the emotion) to deal with emotional situations that commonly occur in school.
Learn more

Adult Emotional Intelligence Test

The Adult Emotional Intelligence Test is a multi-component assessment that includes an Emotion Perception Test (EPT), Emotion Understanding Test (EPT), and a Teacher Emotion Regulation Assessment (TERA).

Contact Us

You can reach us at SELassessments@yale.edu.

Publications

  • Baumsteiger, R., Garcia, B., Cipriano, C., Hoffmann, J. D., Willner, C. J., & Brackett, M. A. (under review). Assessing adolescents’ momentary emotions and emotion regulation at school: A systematic review and future directions.
  • Baumsteiger, R. Hoffmann, J. D., Seibyl, J., Rose, B., & Brackett, M. A. (under review). A Systematic Review of Secondary School Climate Assessments.
  • Cipriano, C. (2019). Connecting the Dots of SEL Assessment: Methodologies that matter for students, teachers, and policy. Measuring SEL, The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. Published February 27, 2019.
  • Floman, J. L., Ponnock, A. R., Brackett, M. A., LaPalme, M. L., & Barsade, S. G. (in prep) The Emotion Understanding Test (EUT): Development and Validation of a Performance-Based Measure of Emotion Understanding Ability.
  • Hoffmann, J. D., Baumsteiger, R., Seibyl, J., Hills, E., Bradley, C., Cipriano, C., & Brackett, M. A. (2022). Building Useful, Web-based Educational Measures for Students, with Students: An Illustrative Demonstration with the The School Climate Walkthrough Tool for High Schools. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice.
  • LaPalme, M. L., Barsade, S. G., Brackett, M. A., & Floman, J. L. (under review). The Meso Affect Perception Test (MAP Test).
  • Nabatova, A. (2021). How to create accessible software products. Retrieved from https://waverleysoftware.com/blog/software-accessibility-development/
  • Ng, Z. J., Willner, C. J., Mannweiler, M. D., Hoffmann, J. D., Bailey, C. S., & Cipriano, C. (2022). A Systematic Review of Emotion Regulation Assessments in U.S. Schools: Bridging the Gap between Researchers and Educators. Educational Psychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-022-09691-4
  • Willner, C. J., Hoffmann, J. D., Bailey, C. S., Harrison, A. P., Garcia, B., Ng, Z. J., Cipriano, C., & Brackett, M. A. (2022). The development of cognitive reappraisal from early childhood through adolescence: A systematic review and methodological recommendations. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.875964

Meet the Team

  • Principal Investigator

    Assistant Professor, Child Study Center; Director of Research, Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence; Director of Research, Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence

    Christina Cipriano, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor at the Yale Child Study Center and is the Director of Research at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. Dr. Cipriano is an Applied Developmental and Educational Psychologist, and her research focuses on social and emotional learning intervention and assessment in the service of marginalized student and teacher populations through systematic examination of the interactions within their homes, schools, and communities to promote pathways to optimal developmental outcomes.  Chris is a national expert in SEL and has extensive experience working in classrooms with marginalized populations, providing training to teachers and support staff, and direct instruction to students. Dr. Cipriano is the Principle Investigator of several funded research to practice projects and regularly disseminate her science in both academic journals and professional development workshops for pre-service and in-service educators and school personnel. Dr. Cipriano currently manages a research portfolio of over $12 million dollars in SEL research, including federal and foundation grant funding. She has published 65+ papers, commentaries, and reports, spanning top tier peer-reviewed journals, and media outlets such as The Washington Post, Education Week, PBS, The Greater Good Science Center, and Edsurge. Dr. Cipriano’s leadership in the field has been recognized by the US Department of Education, earning her an appointment on the Social and Behavioral Panel of the Institute of Education Sciences in addition to other federal work groups that are informing the future of SEL research, practice, and policy. Dr. Cipriano is the Director of Research at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, and she designs and maintains large-scale basic and applied research studies on: emotions, emotional intelligence, and social and emotional learning, including longitudinal studies and randomized controlled trials. Under Dr. Cipriano’s leadership since 2018, the YCEI Division of Research has grown to include 29 research staff, including robust post-graduate and post-doctoral training programming.A Jack Kent Cooke Scholar, Dr. Cipriano received her Ph.D. and a Certificate in Human Rights and International Justice from the Boston College Lynch School of Education, her Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and B.A. from Hofstra University Honors College. Dr. Cipriano currently serves on the Professional Advisory Board of the National Center for Learning Disabilities, Teachstone and Transforming Education.Dr. Cipriano is the mother of four beautiful children who inspire her daily to take the moon and make it shine for everyone. You can learn more about Chris at drchriscip.com
  • Co-Principal Investigator

    Research Scientist in the Child Study Center

    Jessica Hoffmann, Ph.D., is a research scientist at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence where she currently serves as the Director of Adolescent Initiatives.Jessica received her B.A. in psychology and sociology from Brandeis University, and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in clinical psychology from Case Western Reserve University. Jessica specializes in working within school settings to develop approaches and programming (RULER and inspirED) aimed at enhancing children’s creativity, promoting positive school climates, and enhancing mental health. Her current research focuses on the efficacy of RULER and inspirED for secondary schools, including the impact of emotion skills instruction on school climate, creative problem solving, and emotion regulation ability.
  • Expert Consultant of the Project

    Assistant Professor in the Child Study Center; Director of Early Childhood, Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, Child Study Center

    Craig S. Bailey, Ph.D., is Director of Early Childhood at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and Assistant Professor at the Child Study Center in the Yale School of Medicine. As a co-developer of RULER, Dr. Bailey and his team facilitate professional development workshops and develop content for practicing and teaching emotional intelligence. As a researcher, Dr. Bailey conducts psychological, educational, and intervention research, and in general, his research explores children’s social and emotional learning in early childhood classrooms with an emphasis on how educators support and promote the development of empathy and emotion regulation.With experience as an early childhood educator, Dr. Bailey is passionate about bridging the gap between research and practice, and in Connecticut, he is the PI on several community-based researcher-to-practitioner partnerships funded by local community and family foundations. The Bridgeport Early Childhood SEL Initiative, funded by the Tauck Family Foundation, and the Hartford Early Childhood SEL Initiative, funded by the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, are tasked with ensuring coordinated, high-quality SEL programming and supports for the early childhood educators, young children, and families in and around. With federal funding from the Institute of Education Sciences, Dr. Bailey is also the PI of an efficacy trial of RULER in preschool settings (#R305A180293) and Co-PI of a grant developing and validating the Social and Emotional Learning Observation Checklist for Elementary School (SELOC-ES; #R305A210262). Dr. Bailey serves as a consultant for numerous initiatives and organizations, most notably for the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning. At home, Dr. Bailey is a proud father of three young children.
  • MEA Lead

    Associate Research Scientist in the Child Study Center

    I am an Associate Research Scientist at Yale University in the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. My research has two main themes:1) Emotion Regulation: I research how, and how well, individuals manage their emotions. We all experience big swells of emotions from time to time, but the ways that we deal with these emotions, and how well we do so, varies dramatically. In particular, I am interested in how and why individuals develop specific patterns of emotion regulation, the efficacy of emotion regulation training programs, and how individual differences in emotion regulation map onto wellbeing. 2) Poverty and Child Emotion Development: I am also very interested in studying the effects of early adversity, such as poverty, on child development. Specifically, I study the ways that poverty exposure can undermine a child's ability to understand and manage their emotions by encouraging reliance on strategies that may be unhelpful in a broader range of emotional situations.
  • Support Across All Teams

    Postdoctoral Associate in the Child Study Center

    Melissa Lucas, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral associate at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. Dr. Lucas earned her doctorate in educational psychology-applied developmental science from the University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development, where she was an Institute of Education Sciences pre-doctoral fellow. Melissa obtained a B.S. in psychology and sociology from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2016 and an A.S. in social sciences from Northern Virginia Community College in 2015.Dr. Lucas' research focuses on supporting the socioemotional and academic development of Latinx and multilingual populations and considers the role of context, especially teacher-child relationships, to foster nurturing classroom and school environments. Dr. Lucas' current work explores how the "sum total" of schooling (e.g., deficit-oriented policies, student-teacher relationships characterized by conflict, low expectations), as well as family processes that support or hinder Latinx and multilingual students’ early development. Her work hopes to expand our understanding of supportive strategies used by children, families, and educators that encourage culturally resilient academic identities among students from culturally and linguistically minoritized backgrounds.
  • Support for Trajectory of Hope

    Postgraduate Associate in the Child Study Center

    Victoria Mack is a postgraduate associate at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and currently works under the mentorship of Dr. Christina Cipriano on Project Flourish. She received her B.A. in Psychology from Baylor University. As an undergraduate, Victoria served as a supplemental instructor for the university's Introduction to Psychology course. She mentored students and hosted sessions to review course content. After graduation, Victoria worked as a Behavior Technician, providing Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) Therapy to children with Autism. As a technician, she worked one-on-one with clients to help them navigate everyday processes and regulate their emotions. Before joining Yale, Victoria worked in patient care at UT Southwestern Medical Center. Broadly, Victoria's research interests include resiliency in adolescents and emerging adults and the use of emotion regulation strategies after exposure to trauma-inducing events. In her free time, Victoria enjoys traveling, playing volleyball, and watching movies.
  • Support for Urban Assembly

    Postgraduate Associate in the Child Study Center

    Sean McFarland is a postgraduate associate at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. He received his B.A. in Psychology from Moravian College in May 2021. As an undergraduate, he completed an Honors thesis focused on the differences between digital and in-person interpersonal emotion regulation in individuals with anxiety, depression, and stress. He also worked with the Moravian Counseling Center to lead a peer therapy group for undergraduate students. These experiences have helped cultivate his interests in emotion regulation, various psychopathologies, and the development of emotional intelligence. Sean is also a former athlete who enjoys all things athletics and fitness. In his free time, he loves going fishing, finding new shows to watch, and playing with his dog, Oliver.
  • Associate Research Scientist in the Child Study Center

    Zi Jia (ZJ) Ng joined the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence (YCEI) in January of 2020 as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. In December of 2021, ZJ transitioned to Associate Research Scientist at the Center. Effective July 1, 2023, ZJ will transition to Associate Research Scientist for the Cipriano Col(lab)oratory within the Yale Child Study Center. In her current position at the YCEI, ZJ works on Project Flourish, which examines how social and emotional learning assessments work practically in schools and support students of color and their educators to thrive. Her research focuses on emotion regulation in children and adolescents. ZJ was born and raised in Singapore. She received her B.Soc.Sci in Psychology from the National University of Singapore and her Ph.D. in School Psychology from the University of South Carolina. She completed her APA-accredited pre-doctoral internship at Sarah Reed Children’s Center and her clinical postdoctoral fellowship at Centerstone Kentucky. ZJ is also a licensed child and adolescent psychologist as well as a nationally certified school psychologist. In her free time, ZJ enjoys paper crafting and playing Pokémon Go.
  • Adult EI Lead

    Associate Research Scientist

    Dr. Ponnock studies motivation and well-being with a focus on minority populations. She received her PhD from Temple University in Educational Psychology and her MA from the University of Santa Monica in Psychology. Her current work at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence focuses on educator well-being as well as measurement development in emotional intelligence.
  • Purchases, Payments, Scheduling

    Senior Administrative Assistant; Operations Coordinator for Research, Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence

    Zoë Soeters is the Operations Coordinator for Research at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. She works closely with Linda Torv and Dr. Chris Cipriano to provide administrative support for the research team. Zoë has been at Yale for over 15 years in various departments and most recently at Yale Law School in the Career Development Office. She graduated from Marist College with a B.A. in English Literature, minor in Psychology, and also holds a Certificate in Accounting from Post University. Outside of the office, Zoë enjoys spending time with her husband and dog, reading, baking, and horseback riding.
  • Staffing/IRB/Partnerships

    Program Manager 1; Associate Director of Research Administration, Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence

    Linda Torv joined the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence in February of 2019 as the Program Manager for Research. In September of 2022, Linda transitioned to Associate Director of Research Administration at the Center. Effective July 1, 2023, Linda will transition to Lab Manager for the Cipriano Col(lab)oratory within the Yale Child Study Center. In her current position at the YCEI, Linda supports researchers at all career levels with the management of these research projects, including hiring and staffing, creating and maintaining partnerships, and university and grant reporting. Prior to her work at the YCEI, Linda managed a statewide nutrition, fitness and gardening program through the University of Connecticut, Department of Extension, funded through the National Institute Food and Agriculture. Linda has a B.S. in Public Health and a Master of Public Health from Southern Connecticut State University. In her free time, Linda enjoys spending time outdoors with her husband, son, and dog.