Establishing the criterion validity of Zoo U's game-based social emotional skills assessment for school-based outcomes

Zoo U is a game platform which implements performance-based assessment of social emotional (SE) skills through theory-driven content and customized game mechanics. Children engage with characters in a school-like story world to complete six virtual social situations specifically tailored to require...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of applied developmental psychology Vol. 55; pp. 52 - 61
Main Authors DeRosier, Melissa E., Thomas, James M.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Norwood Elsevier Inc 01.03.2018
Elsevier Science Ltd
Subjects
Academic achievement
Academic readiness
Adjustment
Assessment
Children
Cooperation
Criterion validity
Developmental psychology
Educational evaluation
Emotional regulation
Empathy
Evaluation
Game-based
Performance-based
Problem solving
School-based outcomes
Social behavior
Social emotional skills
Social situations
Social skills
Student participation
Criterion validity
Social emotional skills
Performance-based
Game-based
Assessment
School-based outcomes
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Zoo U is a game platform which implements performance-based assessment of social emotional (SE) skills through theory-driven content and customized game mechanics. Children engage with characters in a school-like story world to complete six virtual social situations specifically tailored to require the SE skills of communication, cooperation, empathy, emotion regulation, impulse control, and social initiation. Prior work established the scoring algorithms and construct validity for the six game-based scenes. In this study, we examined the degree to which social competence, as measured across the six Zoo U scenes, was related to school-based adjustment. As expected, children who demonstrated higher social competence when problem solving Zoo U's virtual situations were significantly more likely to exhibit positive social, behavioral, and academic adjustment, above and beyond demographic influences, and children who performed poorly on Zoo U were significantly more likely to experience negative school-based outcomes. The potential for game-based platforms to enable broad-scale SE skills assessment with children is discussed.
ISSN:0193-3973
1873-7900
DOI:10.1016/j.appdev.2017.03.001