Q&A

SSES assesses the level of formation of 17 social and emotional skills of students, as well as the factors that influence their level of development at home, in school, in interaction with peers, through previous experiences and students’ understanding of the impact of social and emotional skills on future life.

Social and emotional skills differ from cognitive skills, such as literacy or numeracy, because they relate to how people manage their emotions, perceive themselves, and interact with others.

To assess these skills, the survey relies on a well-known method, the “Big Five” model.

The model includes groups of interrelated social and emotional skills in five key dimensions. For instance, the engagement dimension covers empathy, trust, and interaction. These skill sets provide a systematic, comprehensive, and balanced consideration of social and emotional skills of students.

To learn more about the skills measured, go to Main page (screen 4).

The measurement tool in SSES is a set of statements, for instance: “I like learning new things” (for curiosity) or “I am relaxed and handle stress well” (for stress resistance). A student should express their attitude to each statement using different scales, for example: agree — disagree, relevant —irrelevant, or respond about how frequently they feel or do something.

This tool reveals behavioral, cognitive, and emotional patterns that are typical for a student. It is most often used for assessing social and emotional skills and provides a simple and effective way to collect information from a large number of respondents. Also, this tool is cost-effective and easy to administer, tends to produce consistent results, and in many cases provides an extremely high approximation of objective indicators.

In addition to the statement tool dedicated to social and emotional skills, SSES includes contextual surveys to identify factors that influence the development of these skills in students. The questions concern life at school and at home, their relationships with peers, previous experiences, and understanding the impact of social and emotional skills on their future life. To fully cover these contexts, questionnaires are filled out not only by students, but also by their teachers, school management, and parents (or persons who substitute for them). These surveys allow seeing where educational policies can be improved and teaching methods adapted.

450 educational institutions from urban and rural areas are participating in the SSES in Ukraine, including 26 schools that are part of the nationwide experiment on SEE Learning implementation, the program on social, emotional, and ethical learning.

Schoolchildren aged 10 and 15, as well as teachers, school administrators, parents (or other caregivers) will participate in SSES.

The Survey participants fill in questionnaires on a designated online platform while being on site in their school. The process is monitored by a representative of the survey organizers, following the requirements specified in the guidelines and discussed during special training, as well as representatives of the school teaching staff.