Early Childhood Social Skills Measure (ECSSM)

Abstract

The Early Childhood Social Skills Measure (ECSSM) is a standardized psychometric instrument developed by Nilufer Kuru, Michael Ungar, and Berrin Akman (2023) to assess the multifaceted domain of social competence and peer interactive behavior among preschool-aged children situated within structurally vulnerable and humanitarian environments, specifically refugee camps. Recognizing that normative developmental trajectories and interpersonal behaviors are profoundly reshaped by the chronic stressors, displacement, and socioeconomic constraints characteristic of forced migration, the authors constructed the ECSSM to furnish an ecologically grounded, culturally sensitive assessment tool. The instrument originated from an exhaustive systematic review of early childhood development literature—specifically focusing on social competence, peer dynamics, prosocial behaviors, and adaptive functioning—triangulated with qualitative focus group discussions conducted with early childhood educators working directly with displaced populations.

Initially conceptualized as a 48-item pool, the instrument underwent rigorous psychometric evaluation using a community sample of preschool-aged Syrian refugee children of Turkmen descent living in Turkey. Through exploratory principal component analysis (PCA), 14 items demonstrating psychometric weaknesses or poor theoretical fit were removed, alongside items showing unacceptable cross-loadings, resulting in a 31-item transitional matrix that accounted for 72.94% of the total variance. Subsequent confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) established a refined, parsimonious 23-item structure organized across six correlated latent dimensions: Communication, Cooperation, Empathy, Assertion (Assertiveness), Responsibility, and Self-Control. The structural model demonstrated robust fit indices (χ² = 963.61, df = 186, p < 0.001; CFI = 0.941; NFI = 0.914; GFI = 0.891; RMSEA = 0.074; RMR = 0.018) following the specification of a covariance parameter between the error terms of two adjacent communication indicators (C-1 and C-2). Internal consistency reliability estimates for the subscales ranged from acceptable to good, with Cronbach’s alpha values spanning from α = 0.73 (Responsibility) to α = 0.85 (Cooperation). Responses are captured using an anchored three-point Likert scale (Always, Sometimes, Never). The ECSSM represents a critical methodological milestone for developmental psychometrics, enabling researchers, school psychologists, and humanitarian aid practitioners to identify social-emotional vulnerabilities, benchmark developmental competence, and evaluate targeted psychosocial interventions in conflict-affected early childhood populations.

Keywords

Early Childhood Social Skills Measure, ECSSM, early childhood development, refugee mental health, social competence, prosocial behavior, resilience, psychometrics, Syrian refugees, preschool assessment, social-emotional learning, peer relationships

Authors

• Nilufer Kuru, Ph.D. — Siirt University, Faculty of Education, Department of Early Childhood Education, Siirt, Turkey. Email: [email protected] (Corresponding Author).
• Michael Ungar, Ph.D. — Dalhousie University, Faculty of Health, Resilience Research Centre, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. ORCID: 0000-0003-0431-347X.
• Berrin Akman, Ph.D. — Hacettepe University, Faculty of Education, Department of Early Childhood Education, Ankara, Turkey.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Early Childhood Social Skills Measure (ECSSM) is to provide an empirically validated, culturally nuanced, and developmentally targeted psychometric assessment of social competence in young children residing in high-adversity humanitarian settings, particularly refugee camps. Early childhood, spanning ages three through seven, represents an exceptionally sensitive developmental epoch characterized by rapid neural arborization, executive function consolidation, and the emergence of foundational socio-emotional competencies. In normative contexts, social skills—such as sharing, conversational turn-taking, empathic distress recognition, and emotional self-regulation—emerge through ongoing transactional exchanges within safe family, neighborhood, and classroom ecosystems. However, for young children exposed to armed conflict, forced displacement, structural poverty, and community disorganization, these developmental trajectories are frequently interrupted, derailed, or uniquely adapted to survive threatening environments.

Standard psychological and psychoeducational assessment inventories designed in Western, high-income contexts frequently pathologize behaviors exhibited by refugee children or fail to capture the specific adaptive strategies required in temporary settlements. Such scales often assume predictable classroom routines, stable maternal-child dyads, and standard peer socialization opportunities. The ECSSM was engineered specifically to bridge this diagnostic and assessment gap. By framing social skills through both developmental and ecological resilience paradigms, the instrument enables educators, developmental psychologists, and humanitarian agencies to systematically gauge the prosocial behaviors and behavioral self-regulation necessary for successful preschool integration and long-term psychosocial adaptation.

From an applied clinical and diagnostic perspective, the ECSSM serves three interconnected functions:

• Screening and Early Identification: Identifying children who exhibit severe deficits in interpersonal communication, emotional regulation, or cooperation, thereby indicating potential risk for internalizing disorders (e.g., trauma-related withdrawal, selective mutism, depression) or externalizing difficulties (e.g., reactive aggression, conduct disturbances).
• Targeted Intervention Formulation: Allowing practitioners to delineate specific skill deficits across the six distinct subdomains. Rather than labeling a child globally as “socially maladjusted,” the measure clarifies whether the underlying challenge stems from assertiveness deficits, empathy impairments, or executive dysregulation in self-control.
• Evaluation of Humanitarian and Educational Interventions: Functioning as a pre- and post-test outcome measure for early childhood education programs, psychosocial support interventions, and resilience-building programs implemented by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international bodies (e.g., UNICEF, UNHCR) in conflict zones and refugee settlements.

Psychological Construct

The overarching construct evaluated by the instrument is Early Childhood Social Skills, conceptualized not as a monolithic, static trait, but as a dynamic constellation of observable behaviors, cognitive appraisals, and emotional regulatory capacities that facilitate positive, constructive social transactions while mitigating maladaptive friction. Within the framework of the ECSSM, this construct is decomposed into six empirically validated and theoretically cohesive latent dimensions:

1. Communication

Communication encompasses the child’s expressive and receptive behavioral repertoire during interactions with peers and adults. In early childhood, communication is both verbal and non-verbal, reflecting the capacity to express bodily needs, articulate personal emotional states, initiate conversational exchanges, listen attentively to instructional guidance, and interpret communicative gestures. In refugee camp environments, where children may be navigating language barriers, bilingualism, or trauma-induced communicative inhibition, effective communication represents a fundamental survival and socialization mechanism that buffers against peer marginalization.

2. Cooperation

Cooperation assesses prosocial collaborative behaviors during structured and unstructured group activities. This dimension captures the willingness to share communal resources (e.g., toys, drawing utensils), adhere to shared rules in organized play, accept classroom routines, and work synergistically toward common goals without precipitating conflict. Cooperation reflects the child’s progressive transition from egocentric play toward cooperative play stages (as conceptualized by Parten), which is critical in resource-scarce environments where communal sharing is a functional imperative.

3. Empathy

Empathy gauges affective resonance and cognitive perspective-taking, specifically the child’s capacity to detect, interpret, and respond compassionately to the emotional distress, pain, or joy of peers. Observable behaviors include offering comfort to a crying classmate, defending an injured peer, or demonstrating remorse following an interpersonal transgression. Empathy forms the psychological core of altruism and prosocial bonding, acting as a natural inhibitor of reactive aggression.

4. Assertion (Assertiveness)

Assertion reflects constructive, non-aggressive self-advocacy. This dimension measures the child’s ability to state their rights, decline unwanted peer demands, request assistance from authority figures when experiencing distress, and express differing viewpoints without succumbing to passivity or escalating into verbal or physical aggression. For displaced children who have experienced profound disempowerment, positive assertiveness is an essential indicator of psychological agency and personal efficacy.

5. Responsibility

Responsibility captures the behavioral manifestation of personal accountability and rule adherence within the social micro-system. Indicators within this domain evaluate the child’s reliability in caring for their personal and collective belongings, cleaning up after activities, respecting designated boundaries, and demonstrating awareness of the consequences of their actions on the collective group. In displaced settings, children are frequently expected to undertake elevated levels of familial and domestic responsibility, making this dimension deeply salient to their daily functioning.

6. Self-Control

Self-Control encompasses the behavioral, cognitive, and emotional regulatory mechanisms required to manage impulses, defer gratification, modulate intense affective arousal (such as anger or frustration), and tolerate transitions or disappointments without explosive outbursts. Grounded in executive functioning architecture (specifically inhibitory control and working memory), self-control enables the child to pause, deliberate, and choose socially adaptive actions over immediate, unregulated impulse fulfillment.

Theoretical Framework

The conceptual architecture of the ECSSM is anchored in an interdisciplinary synthesis of developmental, behavioral, and ecological theories, most notably Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Systems Theory, Michael Ungar’s Social-Ecological Theory of Resilience, and Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory.

Bioecological Systems Theory

Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Model posits that human development occurs through increasingly complex, bidirectional interactions—termed proximal processes—between an active human organism and the immediate environment. For refugee children, the traditional micro-systems (family, peer group, preschool) and meso-systems (interactions between parents and teachers) are disrupted by the overarching exo-system and macro-system shocks of war, statelessness, and camp administration. The ECSSM operationalizes social skills as proximal behavioral expressions that are directly molded by these environmental dynamics. When structural resources are constrained, the immediate peer group in a camp preschool serves as the central microsystem where adaptive social schemas must be negotiated.

Social-Ecological Resilience Paradigm

Complementing ecological theory, Michael Ungar’s resilience framework asserts that psychological resilience is not an individual character trait or biological predisposition, but rather the capacity of individuals to navigate their way to psychological, social, cultural, and physical resources that sustain their well-being, coupled with the capacity of their families and communities to provide those resources in culturally meaningful ways. Within this theoretical paradigm, the social skills measured by the ECSSM are understood not merely as internal cognitive competencies, but as relational strategies enabling young children to extract protective resources from peers, educators, and community caregivers under conditions of toxic stress.

Social Learning and Social Information Processing Theories

The behavioral markers embedded within the ECSSM draw directly upon Bandura’s Social Learning Theory and Kenneth Dodge’s Social Information Processing model. Bandura emphasized that observational learning, vicarious reinforcement, and behavioral modeling shape the acquisition of prosocial skills. In camp environments, where children may be repeatedly exposed to adult stress, trauma, or conflict resolution through aggression, prosocial modeling becomes a critical countervailing force. Dodge’s model explains how children decode social cues, interpret peer intentions, clarify interactive goals, search for behavioral responses, decide on an action, and enact that response. The six subscales of the ECSSM map directly onto these behavioral decision-making stages, assessing whether children can constructively interpret and resolve peer conflicts.

Validity

The validation of the ECSSM followed a structured psychometric progression incorporating content validation, construct validation through multivariate dimensionality analysis, and ecological field testing.

Content Validity

Content validity was established through a multi-stage qualitative and consensus-based development phase. Initially, an extensive systematic review of early childhood social development, social competence frameworks (such as Gresham and Elliott’s Social Skills Rating System), and trauma-informed developmental literature was conducted. This generated an expansive thematic matrix. To ensure ecological and cultural validity, the authors conducted structured focus groups with preschool teachers and early childhood educators serving Syrian refugee children within camp schools in Turkey. These educators provided empirical observations regarding how displaced children express solidarity, communicate trauma, assert boundaries, and navigate cooperative play under extreme stress. Based on thematic analysis, an initial pool of 48 items was written in clear, developmentally concrete language, ensuring high content coverage across hypothesized social competence domains.

Construct and Factorial Validity

Construct validity was rigorously established through exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic workflows. The initial 48-item pool was administered to an empirical validation sample of preschool-aged Syrian refugee children of Turkmen descent. Exploratory principal component analysis (PCA) revealed significant factor complexity, prompting the removal of 14 psychometrically non-performing items that failed to reach acceptable primary factor loadings (< 0.40) or demonstrated unacceptable cross-loadings across multiple theoretical dimensions. A retained 31-item pool was subsequently re-analyzed via PCA, confirming a robust six-factor conceptual structure that accounted for an exceptional 72.94% of the total cumulative variance in social skills.

To confirm the latent construct validity, Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was conducted on the refined instrument. During structural equation modeling, eight additional items were trimmed due to redundant residual variance or low factor saturation, resulting in a final 23-item structural model spanning the six theorized dimensions. An inspection of modification indices indicated significant localized strain between the unique variances of items C-1 and C-2 (both belonging to the Communication factor). In accordance with psychometric best practices, these two error terms were allowed to freely covary, reflecting localized shared method variance and syntactic similarity between the two adjacent communication prompts. The resulting 23-item, six-factor model demonstrated good overall goodness-of-fit to the empirical data:

• Chi-Square / Degrees of Freedom: χ² = 963.61, df = 186, p < 0.001
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): 0.941 (exceeding the standard > 0.90 acceptable fit threshold)
• Normed Fit Index (NFI): 0.914
• Goodness of Fit Index (GFI): 0.891 (approaching the optimal 0.90 benchmark)
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): 0.074 (falling well within the < 0.08 acceptable boundary, with 90% confidence intervals indicating adequate model specification)
• Root Mean Square Residual (RMR): 0.018 (demonstrating outstanding residual minimization, < 0.05)

Criterion-Related and External Construct Validity

The external validity of the ECSSM was substantiated in the primary validation study by Kuru, Ungar, and Akman (2023), who examined the relationship between the measure’s scores and critical ecological moderators. The findings showed that higher social skills scores were significantly and positively correlated with measures of child resilience. Furthermore, the instrument successfully detected moderation effects associated with length of stay in refugee camps, maternal and paternal education levels, and duration of preschool attendance. Children who attended early childhood education programs within the camps demonstrated significantly elevated scores across Cooperation, Communication, and Self-Control relative to non-attending peers, establishing strong concurrent and criterion validity.

Reliability

The reliability of the ECSSM was evaluated through comprehensive internal consistency analyses conducted on the six subscales derived from the final 23-item model. Internal consistency reflects the degree to which items comprising a specific latent factor measure the same underlying construct with minimal measurement error.

Cronbach’s alpha (α) coefficients for each of the six dimensions demonstrated acceptable to high internal consistency across the board, exceeding standard psychometric thresholds (α ≥ 0.70) recommended for behavioral research and screening instruments:

• Cooperation Subscale: α = 0.85 (demonstrating high internal consistency, indicating strong inter-item relatedness in capturing sharing, collaborative play, and rule adherence).
• Communication Subscale: α = 0.82 (good internal consistency).
• Empathy Subscale: α = 0.80 (good internal consistency).
• Self-Control Subscale: α = 0.78 (acceptable internal consistency for behavioral regulation metrics).
• Assertion Subscale: α = 0.76 (acceptable internal consistency).
• Responsibility Subscale: α = 0.73 (acceptable internal consistency, reflecting an adequate internal reliability profile despite the diverse behavioral manifestations of responsibility in early childhood).

The high proportion of total variance accounted for by the underlying components (72.94%) further attests to the measurement reliability and low error variance characteristic of the latent scale architecture. The elimination of ambiguous items and the specification of correlated measurement residuals for C-1 and C-2 effectively eliminated localized inflation, ensuring that the reported alpha coefficients reflect genuine construct homogeneity.

Factor Analysis

The psychometric structural validation of the ECSSM employed a two-tiered analytic progression combining exploratory dimensionality reduction (Principal Component Analysis) followed by structural verification (Confirmatory Factor Analysis).

Principal Component Analysis (PCA)

The initial 48-item questionnaire, developed through literature synthesis and teacher focus groups, was subjected to PCA to determine empirical factor extraction and identify poorly functioning items. Suitability of the data for factor analysis was established via the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy and Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity. The initial extraction identified a clear six-factor architecture. However, 14 items were sequentially eliminated due to:

• Primary factor loadings below 0.40, indicating insufficient variance sharing with the intended construct.
• Substantial cross-loadings (loadings > 0.35 on secondary or tertiary factors with a margin of difference < 0.15).
• Theoretical inconsistency, where items loaded onto factors divergent from their conceptual domain.

A subsequent PCA conducted on the remaining 31 items validated the six-factor configuration without structural ambiguity, successfully accounting for 72.94% of the total cumulative variance. This exceptionally high explained variance demonstrates that the six latent domains provide an unusually comprehensive representation of early childhood social interaction.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

To rigorously verify the structural integrity of the six-factor model and optimize clinical utility, CFA was performed using maximum likelihood estimation. During the iterative CFA modeling, 8 additional items showing high modification index residual linkages or weaker factor saturations were pruned, refining the instrument to a final, robust 23-item structure organized into the six theoretical factors:

1. Communication
2. Cooperation
3. Empathy
4. Assertion
5. Responsibility
6. Self-Control

During the baseline CFA evaluation, modification indices revealed elevated residual covariance between item C-1 (Communication Item 1) and item C-2 (Communication Item 2). Both items operationalize closely linked aspects of direct communicative engagement. When this error covariance was freely estimated (unconstrained), the model converged successfully with substantially improved fit statistics:

• χ²: 963.61 (df = 186, p < 0.001)
• CFI (Comparative Fit Index): 0.941
• NFI (Normed Fit Index): 0.914
• GFI (Goodness of Fit Index): 0.891
• RMSEA (Root Mean Square Error of Approximation): 0.074
• RMR (Root Mean Square Residual): 0.018

These indices confirm that the 23-item, six-factor configuration possesses robust construct validity and factorial stability, providing an empirical basis for computing both individual subscale scores and overall composite social competence indices.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Early Childhood Social Skills Measure (ECSSM)
• Test Type: Original Rating Scale / Behavioral Observation Inventory
• Primary Respondent Format: Other-report (completed by preschool teachers, early childhood educators, or trained classroom observers familiar with the child’s daily behavioral patterns)
• Total Item Count: 23 items
• Factor Structure: 6 correlated latent subscales:
  • Communication
  • Cooperation
  • Empathy
  • Assertion (Assertiveness)
  • Responsibility
  • Self-Control
• Response Scale: 3-point Likert scale:
  • Always (scored as 3)
  • Sometimes (scored as 2)
  • Never (scored as 1)

  (Note: Scoring directionality should be verified with the official manual for any reverse-scored negative indicators).

• Target Population: Children in early childhood and early school age, specifically validated for children aged 5 to 7 years (applicable across birth to 12 years developmental monitoring frameworks).
• Validated Cultural Context: Syrian refugee children of Turkmen origin living in refugee camp settings within Turkey.
• Available Languages: Original instrument in English; validated translation available in Turkish.
• Administration Time: Approximately 5 to 10 minutes per child.
• Scoring and Interpretation: Subscale raw scores are derived by summing the numeric values of items within each of the six dimensions. Higher scores reflect greater frequency of adaptive prosocial behaviors and superior socio-emotional regulation. Subscale scores can be examined individually to construct an individualized social skills profile or summed to yield a total social competence composite score.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Test Year: 2023
• Copyright and Ownership: Held by the authors: Nilufer Kuru, Michael Ungar, and Berrin Akman.
• Permissions: The measure is intended for academic, humanitarian, and non-commercial clinical research. To obtain permission to administer, translate, or reproduce the full ECSSM, interested researchers and practitioners must contact the corresponding author, Dr. Nilufer Kuru, via email at [email protected].
• Fee: There is no fee required to utilize this instrument for non-commercial scientific research or humanitarian educational programming.
• Commercial Use: Commercial use, unauthorized digital redistribution, or monetization of the ECSSM is strictly prohibited.

References

• Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Prentice-Hall.
• Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Harvard University Press.
• Dodge, K. A. (1986). A social information processing model of social competence in children. In M. Perlmutter (Ed.), Minnesota Symposia on Child Psychology: Vol. 18. Cognitive perspectives on children’s social and behavioral development (pp. 77–125). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Gresham, F. M., & Elliott, S. N. (1990). Social Skills Rating System: Manual. American Guidance Service.
• Kuru, N., Ungar, M., & Akman, B. (2023). Child refugee’s social skills and resilience: Moderating effects of time in refugee camp, parental education, and preschool attendance. Infant and Child Development, 32(4), Article e2424. https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.2424
• Parten, M. B. (1932). Social participation among pre-school children. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 27(3), 243–269. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0074524
• Rose-Krasnor, L. (1997). The nature of social competence: A theoretical review. Social Development, 6(1), 111–135. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9507.1997.tb00097.x
• Rubin, K. H., Bukowski, W. M., & Parker, J. G. (2006). Peer interactions, relationships, and groups. In N. Eisenberg, W. Damon, & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Vol. 3. Social, emotional, and personality development (6th ed., pp. 571–645). John Wiley & Sons.
• Ungar, M. (2011). The social ecology of resilience: Addressing contextual and cultural ambiguity of a nascent construct. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 81(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1939-0025.2010.01067.x

Items of the Scale