Abstract
Afterschool settings have continued to be identified as an ideal outlet for supporting youth development in many arenas, including physical activity (PA) behaviors and social emotional learning (SEL) skills. In fact, PA centered programs are ideal settings for youth to 8 develop and practice SEL skills in authentic ways. However, there a several issues as it relates to understanding the impact of said programs. This includes reliable measures of youth perceptions of their SEL skills, the diverse ability of learners who may attend these programs, and the age range of learners. Given the realities of evaluating youth development in real-world afterschool settings, the purpose of this study was to develop and test the reliability, consistency, and developmental appropriateness of a comprehensive SEL survey (all five components) for 3rd-6th grade and K-2nd grade youth in an afterschool PA program. These measures do not currently exist, and developmentally appropriate tools would allow for program wide evaluation of the same SEL constructs for all participants. As part of a larger study (Anonymous et al., 2022), this repeated cross-sectional study included 273 participants (K-2nd= 149; 3rd -6th = 124). The methods included survey item development, expert panel review, and two cross-sectional explorations for construct reliability and correlational analysis. Following edits from expert panels and time 1 data review, time 2 data showed overall consistent reliability for both the 3-6th grade comprehensive SEL survey as well as the K-2nd grade comprehensive SEL survey. The distinction is targeted as afterschool programs include many learners thus requiring developmentally appropriate survey items to capture all five SEL competencies. This investigation fills a large gap in the literature and addresses the realities of afterschool programming in that the developmental level of participants can vary greatly and there are few evaluation tools to explore program impact for young and diverse groups of students.
Recommended Citation
Simonton, Kelly L.; Wei, Mengyi; Kulinna, Pamela; and Poulos, Allison
(2025)
"Development of a Comprehensive Social-Emotional Learning Questionnaire for Elementary After-School Physical Activity Programs,"
Journal of Youth Development: Vol. 20:
Iss.
1, Article 12.
Available at:
https://open.clemson.edu/jyd/vol20/iss1/12
