Social Emotional Assets and Resilience Scales: Development of a strength-based short-form behavior rating scale system

The purpose of this brief research report is to describe the development of the short form version of a new strength-based behavior rating scale system, the Social-Emotional Assets and Resilience Scales (SEARS; Merrell, 2011). The SEARS is a multi-informant, strength-based, social-emotional assessment system that assesses positive social-emotional attributes of children and adolescents. The results indicate that the SEARS short forms are highly correlated with the SEARS long forms. Additionally, the overall strong correlations between the SEARS short forms and other strength-based measures provide convergent evidence that the SEARS short forms measure a relatively similar construct of social-emotional ability as other strength-based, nationally standardized behavior rating scales. The SEARS system has potential to be used within a multi-tiered prevention and intervention framework; however, additional research is necessary to support its use for screening and progress monitoring-related decisions. Limitations, potential implications, and future research directions of strength-based assessment for progressing monitoring and screening are discussed.