SENNA Inventory for the Assessment of Social and Emotional Skills in Public School Students in Brazil: Measuring Both Identity and Self-Efficacy.

Responding to the need for school-based, broadly applicable, low-cost, and brief assessments of socio-emotional skills, we describe the conceptual background and empirical development of the SENNA inventory and provide new psychometric information on its internal structure. Data were obtained through a computerized survey from 50,000 Brazilian students enrolled in public school grades 6 to 12, spread across the entire State of São Paulo. The SENNA inventory was designed to assess 18 particular skills (e.g., empathy, responsibility, tolerance of frustration, and social initiative), each operationalized by nine items that represent three types of items: three positively keyed trait-identity items, three negatively keyed identity items, and three (always positively keyed) self-efficacy items, totaling a set of 162 items. Results show that the 18 skill constructs empirically defined a higher-order structure that we interpret as the social-emotional Big Five, labeled as Engaging with Others, Amity, Self-Management, Emotional Regulation, and Open-Mindedness. The same five factors emerged whether we assessed the 18 skills with items representing (a) a trait-identity approach that emphasizes lived skills (what do I typically do?) or (b) a self-efficacy approach that emphasizes capability (how well can I do that?). Given that its target youth group is as young as 11 years old (grade 6), a population particularly prone to the response bias of acquiescence, SENNA is also equipped to correct for individual differences in acquiescence, which are shown to systematically bias results when not corrected.

Quality of life and social participation in dental rehabilitation: A personality and multi-informant perspective.

OBJECTIVES: Contemporary research on the impact of dental rehabilitation scarcely focuses on the role of personality and social relationships in QoL related to dental implant treatment. To overcome biases related to evaluation with self-reports, descriptions provided by informed external observers are recommended. AIMS: To investigate the impact of implant-supported rehabilitation on quality of life and social participation taking into account patient's personality. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Fifty-four patients were included in this study and assigned to either a single unit group (n = 15) or a complete jaw restoration group (n = 39). Of the 54 participants, 49 nominated an external observer who can evaluate the daily behavior of the patient. Before and after treatment patients and their external observer completed the OHIP-14, the NEO-FFI and the MSPP questionnaires respectively focusing on Oral Health related Quality of Life, Personality and Social participation. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: The correlations between self- and observer ratings on pre and post treatment outcomes on were insignificant (QoL pre: p = 0.086, post: p = 0.115, freq. soc. part pre: p = 0.944, post: p = 0.876, div. soc. part pre: p = 0.798, post: p = 0.167), suggesting considerable differences in observer perspectives. The traits Neuroticism, Extraversion and Agreeableness were associated with QoL. Openness, Conscientiousness and Agreeableness were associated with social participation. Patients in the complete jaw restoration group reported more impact of the implant treatment on quality of life as compared to the single unit group (p = 0.007). The complete jaw restoration group reported an improved quality of life after treatment and significant increases of both frequency (p = 0.001) and diversity of social participation (p = 0.036). In conclusion there was a minor impact of treatment with single crowns on quality of life and social participation compared to the full denture group. The role of personality and the use of multi-informants in evaluating dental treatment was found important.

Social-emotional skill assessment in children and adolescents: Advances and challenges in personality, clinical, and educational contexts.

The development and promotion of social-emotional skills in childhood and adolescence contributes to subsequent well-being and positive life outcomes. However, the assessment of these skills is associated with conceptual and methodological challenges. This review discusses how social-emotional skill measurement in youth could be improved in terms of skills' conceptualization and classification, and in terms of assessment techniques and methodologies. The first part of the review discusses various conceptualizations of social-emotional skills, demonstrates their overlap with related constructs such as emotional intelligence and the Big Five personality dimensions, and proposes an integrative set of social-emotional skill domains that has been developed recently. Next, methodological approaches that are innovative and may improve social-emotional assessments are presented, illustrated by concrete examples. We discuss how these innovations could advance social-emotional assessments, and demonstrate links to similar issues in related fields. We conclude the review by providing several concrete assessment recommendations that follow from this discussion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

The predictive power of people's intraindividual variability across situations: Implementing whole trait theory in assessment.

In the last decade, there has been increased recognition that traits refer not only to between-person differences but also to meaningful within-person variability across situations (i.e., whole trait theory). So far, this broader more contemporary trait conceptualization has made few inroads into assessment practices. Therefore, this study focuses on the assessment and predictive power of people's intraindividual variability across situations. In three studies (either in student or employee samples), both test-takers' mean trait scores and the variability of their responses across multiple written job-related situations of a situational judgment test (SJT) were assessed. Results revealed that people's intraindividual variability (a) was related to their self-rated functional flexibility, (b) predicted performance above their mean scores, and (c) predicted their actual personality state variability over 10 days. These results open opportunities for complementing traditional selection procedures with more dynamic indices in assessment. (PsycINFO Database Record

18REST: a short RIASEC-interest measure for large-scale educational and vocational assessment.

The construction of the 18REST, a short 18-item inventory to describe students' position on John Holland's RIASEC interest types, is documented. The instrument is meant to be used in large-scale assessment in education and on the labor market, supplementing information on school achievement and social-emotional skills. This research was carried out in Brazil, initially with two independent samples composed by adolescents and adults. The 18REST's psychometric properties are compared to those of the more extended RIASEC item pool and confirmed in a new independent undergraduate sample. Despite differences between genders were found as expected, invariance measurement across gender was indicated. Different ways to use the 18REST in large-scale assessment are discussed.

The relevance of personality assessment in patients with hyperventilation symptoms.

OBJECTIVE: Relatively few data are available concerning the relations between hyperventilation symptoms and general personality traits in clinical populations. A clear picture of the personality traits associated with hyperventilation symptoms could enhance early detection of those individuals who are at risk for developing hyperventilation. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of general personality in hyperventilation syndrome. METHOD: Patients (N = 364) with symptoms not explained by an organic disease and supposedly caused by hyperventilation completed the NEO Five-Factor Inventory, the General Health Questionnaire--12, and the Nijmegen Questionnaire. Patients were also subjected to a hyperventilation provocation test and transcutaneous carbon dioxide (TcPCO(2)) values were registered. RESULTS: The results showed that patients with hyperventilation obtained mean Neuroticism scores above the normative mean. Moreover, only Neuroticism was positively linked with self-reported hyperventilation symptoms, and personality traits were more strongly related to self-reported complaints than to objective physical information. Neuroticism clearly differentiated between different diagnostic groups on the basis of Nijmegen Questionnaire and TcPCO(2) values, and an additional small effect of Agreeableness was observed. CONCLUSIONS: The present study contributes to the evidence that Neuroticism is strongly associated with self-reported hyperventilation symptoms, and provides substantial evidence that Neuroticism is a vulnerability factor in the development of hyperventilation. Therefore, personality assessment may be helpful in advancing the understanding and the early detection of hyperventilation symptoms.

General and maladaptive personality dimensions and the assessment of callous-unemotional traits in adolescence.

Associations between callous-unemotional traits and general and maladaptive personality dimensions are examined in adolescence. More specifically, it was investigated to what extent general and maladaptive personality dimensions can account for the variance in callous-unemotional (CU) scores. Adolescents (N = 509) and their mothers completed the Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits (ICU; Frick, 2003), the Hierarchical Personality Inventory for Children (HiPIC; Mervielde & De Fruyt, 1999, 2002), and the Dimensional Personality Symptom Item Pool (DIPSI; De Clercq, De Fruyt, Van Leeuwen, & Mervielde, 2006). Both personality measures accounted for substantial variance in ICU scores and the overall CU profile in terms of the HiPIC and DIPSI was consistent with psychopathy conceptualizations and consistent across informant. Implications for the assessment of early externalizing trait pathology are discussed.