Abstract:

The aim of this research is to carry out reliability and validity studies of “Social-Emotional Assessment/Evaluation Measure-Preschool (SEAM)” which is completed by parents and developed by Squires et al. in 2014 in the USA to evaluate social-emotional development of preschool children and detect at-risk children. Study group included 48-66 month-old 394 children from 16 schools in Istanbul.  Turkish form of SEAM consisted of 41 items like in the original scale and confirmatory factor analysis results supported the original 10 factor structure. To determine the scale’s criterion validity, “Preschool Social Skill Assessment Scale” was used. It was found a positive significant relation between two scales (r=.77, p<.01). Cronbach Alpha coefficient for entire scale was found as 0.92 and test-retest reliability coefficient was found as 0.90. Corrected item-total correlations ranged from 0.68 to 0.90. Goodness of fit indices of confirmatory factor analysis indicated a good fit between the original model and data (χ2=1224.9, df=769, p<.001; RMSEA=0.039, 90% GA=0.035-0.045; CFI=0.94; TLI=0.93). Results show that SEAM has Turkish language equivalence and is a reliable and valid scale.     

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