Emotional Self-Efficacy Scale for Youth

Abstract

The Emotional Self-Efficacy Scale for Youth (ESES-Y) is a psychometrically validated self-report instrument engineered to assess young people’s subjective beliefs in their capability to identify, understand, utilize, and regulate emotional phenomena in themselves and others. Adapted by Pamela Qualter, Lorraine Dacre Pool, Kathryn J. Gardner, Sarah Ashley-Kot, Alex Wise, and Angelique Wols (2014) from the adult Emotional Self-Efficacy Scale originally developed by Beverley A. Kirk, Nicola S. Schutte, and Donald W. Hine (2008), the ESES-Y bridges Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory and Mayer and Salovey’s four-branch model of emotional intelligence. The inventory comprises 32 items evaluated along a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (Not At All Confident) to 5 (Very Confident). Psychometric investigations establish an empirical four-factor oblique structure corresponding to: (1) Using and Managing One’s Own Emotions (10 items; α = .88), (2) Identifying and Understanding One’s Own Emotions (6 items; α = .75), (3) Dealing with Emotions in Others (8 items; α = .85), and (4) Perceiving Emotion Through Facial Expressions and Body Language (3 items; α = .69), alongside unmodeled filler items. The instrument demonstrates robust internal consistency (composite α ≥ .89), solid test-retest reliability over multiple weeks, confirmed structural validity through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and pronounced convergent and discriminant validity against measures of adolescent trait emotional intelligence, social anxiety, depression, and psychological resilience. The ESES-Y functions as a vital diagnostic and evaluative tool in educational psychology, adolescent mental health research, and school-based social and emotional learning (SEL) interventions.

Keywords

Emotional self-efficacy, ESES-Y, emotional intelligence, adolescent psychometrics, emotion regulation, social cognitive theory, adolescent mental health, social-emotional learning, factor analysis, psychological assessment

Authors

The adaptation and psychometric validation of the Emotional Self-Efficacy Scale for Youth (ESES-Y) was spearheaded by a collaborative team of developmental, educational, and cognitive psychologists:

• Pamela Qualter, Ph.D. — Professor of Education and Psychology, Manchester Institute of Education, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom; formerly at the School of Psychology, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK. Specialized in developmental psychology, childhood loneliness, and emotional development across the lifespan.
• Lorraine Dacre Pool, Ph.D. — Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, United Kingdom. Leading researcher in emotional intelligence, emotional self-efficacy, graduate employability, and applied developmental interventions.
• Kathryn J. Gardner, Ph.D. — Senior Lecturer in Psychology, School of Psychology, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, United Kingdom. Expert in individual differences, emotion processing, and applied psychometrics.
• Sarah Ashley-Kot — School of Psychology, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, United Kingdom. Contributor to adolescent field validation and longitudinal data collection.
• Alex Wise — School of Psychology, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, United Kingdom. Specialist in school-based adolescent psychological assessment.
• Angelique Wols, Ph.D. — Developmental psychologist and psychometrician; affiliated with the Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands. Research focus on adolescent mental well-being, internalizing problems, and applied digital interventions.

The youth adaptation builds directly upon the foundational adult Emotional Self-Efficacy Scale developed by Beverley A. Kirk, Nicola S. Schutte, and Donald W. Hine from the University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales, Australia.

Purpose

The Emotional Self-Efficacy Scale for Youth was designed to satisfy a critical psychometric and conceptual need within adolescent assessment. While traditional ability-based emotional intelligence (EI) tests assess maximum cognitive performance on emotion-related tasks (e.g., scoring responses against expert consensus) and trait EI inventories measure typical behavioral dispositions (e.g., “I am generally an empathetic person”), neither construct captures a young person’s perceived capability to execute specific emotional competencies when confronted with situational demands. In Bandurian social cognitive terms, an adolescent may possess the requisite conceptual knowledge to regulate sadness or calm an enraged peer, yet completely fail to execute those behaviors in real-world contexts due to deficient self-efficacy beliefs.

Adolescence is characterized by extensive neurobiological remodeling in prefrontal-limbic circuitries, heightened emotional reactivity, social reorientation toward peer affiliations, and an escalating vulnerability to internalizing disorders (such as depression and generalized anxiety) and externalizing conduct difficulties. The primary clinical and educational purpose of the ESES-Y is to operationalize an adolescent’s agency over their affective states. Clinicians, school counselors, and developmental researchers employ the ESES-Y to achieve several interrelated objectives:

• Screening and Risk Identification: Pinpointing specific deficits in an adolescent’s self-regulatory or social-emotional confidence before subclinical distress matures into formal affective pathology. Low emotional self-efficacy reliably predicts school disengagement, social withdrawal, peer victimization, and heightened loneliness.
• Tailoring Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Curricula: Allowing educators to identify whether a student cohort lacks confidence in recognizing internal somatic cues of emotion, utilizing positive affect for academic problem-solving, or intervening pro-socially to de-escalate peer conflict.
• Evaluating Psychoeducational Interventions: Serving as a sensitive, responsive outcome index in clinical trials and school interventions. Because self-efficacy beliefs are dynamic, context-responsive, and amenable to mastery experiences, vicarious learning, and verbal persuasion, the ESES-Y exhibits marked sensitivity to therapeutic change compared to rigid personality traits.
• Differentiating Knowledge from Agency: Clarifying clinical assessments where a young client possesses theoretical emotion-processing insight but lacks the subjective confidence required to implement cognitive reappraisal or stress management under acute peer evaluation.

Psychological Construct

The construct assessed by the ESES-Y is perceived emotional self-efficacy within an adolescent developmental milieu. Grounded in the synthesis of structural ability models of emotional intelligence and social cognitive agentic mechanics, the construct reflects an individual’s explicit confidence in executing emotion-related skills across four distinct, correlated domains:

1. Using and Managing One’s Own Emotions

This dimension reflects a youth’s confidence in deliberately modifying, regulating, and harnessing their internal affective landscape to achieve personal, academic, and behavioral goals. Rather than measuring passive mood shifts, this subscale captures deliberate affective agency. Examples include an adolescent’s confidence that they can calm down during intense anger (Item 20), down-regulate stress before an examination or maintain focus at school (Item 22), revitalize energy for competitive sports (Item 26), or deliberately recruit positive mood states to foster divergent thinking and creative problem-solving (Items 6, 18, and 30). Adolescents scoring high in this domain believe that unpleasant emotional states are temporary and malleable rather than overwhelming or permanent.

2. Identifying and Understanding One’s Own Emotions

This subscale captures emotional self-awareness, specifically the confidence to detect internal affective shifts, decode underlying etiology, and differentiate between subtle emotional states. Construct indicators examine an adolescent’s self-assuredness in detecting when they are happy versus unhappy or angry (Items 1 and 9), understanding the environmental or relational triggers that cause their mood to fluctuate (Items 11, 19, and 27), and recognizing what personal activities foster subjective well-being (Item 4). Deficits in this domain closely resemble clinical alexithymia, where individuals experience somatic arousal without the semantic capability to comprehend or articulate what they are feeling.

3. Dealing with Emotions in Others

This factor captures interpersonal emotional agency: the belief that one can effectively read, influence, and support the emotional experiences of peers, friends, and family members. Rather than measuring passive empathy, it quantifies perceived interpersonal communicative mastery. Core competencies include knowing how to cheer up a distressed friend (Items 2 and 32), identifying what drives another person’s anger or sadness (Items 15, 23, and 31), recognizing pleasant emotions in social circles (Item 13), and confidently intervening to help a peer de-escalate severe anger (Item 24). In adolescence, this factor is intimately tied to sociometric popularity, peer acceptance, and the mitigation of interpersonal conflict.

4. Perceiving Emotion Through Facial Expressions and Body Language

The final facet operationalizes confidence in decoding nonverbal emotional communication and outward somatic indicators. Nonverbal sensitivity is foundational for accurate socio-emotional functioning. This subscale measures an adolescent’s perceived capability to discern what emotions they are personally telegraphing to the world via facial expressions (Item 25), inferring their own affective state from bodily feedback like muscular tension or cardiac acceleration (Item 17), and reading the physical posture, autonomic reactions, and bodily changes of others to deduce latent affect (Item 21).

Theoretical Framework

The conceptual architecture of the Emotional Self-Efficacy Scale for Youth integrates two seminal frameworks in contemporary psychological science: Albert Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory and the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Four-Branch Model of Emotional Intelligence.

Bandura (1977, 1997) established that human agency operates through cognitive triadic reciprocal causation among environmental influences, personal factors (including cognitive and biological events), and behavioral patterns. At the core of this system are self-efficacy beliefs: judgments of how well one can organize and execute courses of action required to manage prospective situations. Bandura posited that self-efficacy beliefs determine whether individuals initiate coping behavior, the degree of effort they expend, and how long they persevere in the face of obstacles and aversive experiences. Crucially, self-efficacy is domain-specific. General self-efficacy does not reliably capture an individual’s confidence when navigating the emotionally charged, ambiguous, and physiologically taxing events of peer negotiation and affective distress. Hence, emotional self-efficacy represents the domain-specific application of social cognitive agency to affective processing.

To establish the domain boundaries of emotional competence, Kirk, Schutte, and Hine (2008), and subsequently Qualter and colleagues (2014), drew upon the structural taxonomy formulated by John D. Mayer and Peter Salovey (1997). The Mayer-Salovey model delineates four hierarchical mental abilities:

1. Perception of Emotion: The capacity to identify emotions in oneself, others, art, and environments.
2. Use of Emotion to Facilitate Thought: The ability to harness emotions to prioritize cognitive processing, foster creativity, and adopt multiple perspectives.
3. Understanding Emotion: The ability to comprehend emotional language, understand complex blends of affect, and recognize developmental transitions between states.
4. Management of Emotion: The ability to remain open to feelings and to modulate emotions in oneself and others to promote personal and social growth.

While the original adult ESES conceptualized these dimensions across a broader item pool, psychometric evaluations by Dacre Pool and Qualter (2012a) established that in ecological settings, the theoretical boundaries consolidate into an empirically supported four-factor oblique structure where “Using” and “Managing” coalesce into an operational regulatory factor, while “Perceiving” and “Understanding” differentiate across intrapersonal and interpersonal axes. In adapting this framework for youth, Qualter et al. (2014) recalibrated vocabulary, context scenarios (e.g., classroom focus, sports performance, peer distress regarding lost pets), and developmental relevance, ensuring that the theoretical synthesis accurately maps onto early-to-mid adolescent cognitive capacities.

Validity

Validation studies of the ESES-Y have demonstrated substantial construct, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity across diverse youth cohorts in the United Kingdom, Europe, and international samples.

Construct and Factorial Validity

Qualter et al. (2014) conducted comprehensive psychometric evaluations involving young adolescents (aged 11 to 15 years; N > 600). Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed that an oblique four-factor model provides an exceptional fit to the empirical data, significantly outperforming unidimensional models and alternative two-factor orthogonal structures. Factor loadings for designated indicator items consistently exceeded .45, with most falling between .55 and .82. Measurement invariance testing across sex revealed metric and scalar invariance, confirming that the ESES-Y measures equivalent latent constructs across male and female adolescents without systematic measurement bias.

Convergent Validity

The convergent validity of the ESES-Y is substantiated by significant, robust correlations with theoretically affiliated constructs:

• Trait Emotional Intelligence: The ESES-Y correlates strongly with established adolescent trait EI measures, such as the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire – Adolescent Short Form (TEIQue-ASF), with coefficients typically ranging between r = .58 and .71 (p < .001), indicating substantial shared conceptual variance while preserving distinctiveness.
• Adaptive Emotion Regulation: Positive associations are observed with adaptive coping strategies on the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ), notably positive reappraisal (r = .42) and refocusing on planning (r = .38).
• Academic and Social Self-Efficacy: Moderate correlations (r = .34 to .48) emerge with generalized adolescent self-efficacy measures, confirming that while general confidence is related, the ESES-Y captures specialized affective competence.

Discriminant and Criterion-Related Validity

Discriminant validity is supported by modest or nonsignificant associations with general cognitive ability (IQ measured via standardized nonverbal reasoning matrices, r < .10, p > .05), confirming that the scale does not conflate intellectual maturity with perceived emotional mastery. Furthermore, distinct negative correlations with social anxiety (r = -.44), childhood depression inventories (r = -.49), and school loneliness (r = -.38) demonstrate that high emotional self-efficacy actively buffers against internalizing symptomatology.

Predictive and Incremental Validity

In multiple regression analyses controlling for personality traits (Big Five) and general cognitive ability, ESES-Y scores accounted for significant unique variance (ΔR² = .08 to .14) in predicting psychological well-being, prosocial peer nominations, and classroom behavioral engagement. Longitudinal tracking over an academic year revealed that baseline ESES-Y scores reliably predicted successful school transition and reduced risk of adolescent depressive onset.

Reliability

The psychometric reliability of the ESES-Y has been evaluated across internal consistency paradigms and temporal stability assessments:

Internal Consistency

In the primary adaptation and validation study by Qualter et al. (2014), the total composite scale yielded an exceptional Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of α = .91 (McDonald’s ω = .92), demonstrating high homogeneity across the operationalized items. The internal consistency estimates for the four empirical subscales are documented as follows:

• Using and Managing One’s Own Emotions: Cronbach’s α = .88 (10 items), reflecting high internal cohesion in youth’s evaluations of their own affective regulatory mastery.
• Dealing with Emotions in Others: Cronbach’s α = .85 (8 items), demonstrating strong measurement stability regarding interpersonal emotional interventions.
• Identifying and Understanding One’s Own Emotions: Cronbach’s α = .75 (6 items), indicating acceptable to good consistency for self-monitoring capacities.
• Perceiving Emotion Through Facial Expressions and Body Language: Cronbach’s α = .69 (3 items), an acceptable coefficient given the brevity of a 3-item subscale, meeting standard psychometric thresholds where subscale reliability exceeds .65.

Temporal Stability (Test-Retest Reliability)

Test-retest assessments over an interval of 4 to 6 weeks among non-clinical adolescent school samples yielded intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) and Pearson product-moment correlations ranging from r = .78 to r = .84 for the total scale, with subscale coefficients ranging from .71 to .81. These indices indicate that while emotional self-efficacy remains stable over brief time horizons in the absence of direct psychoeducational interventions, it exhibits sufficient variance to register measurable gains following deliberate social-emotional training.

Factor Analysis

The factorial architecture of the ESES-Y was examined using both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) techniques during its psychometric development and independent cross-cultural replications.

Exploratory Factor Structure

Initial exploratory factor analyses utilizing principal axis factoring with Promax (oblique) rotation on adolescent calibration samples identified four distinct eigenvalues exceeding 1.0 (Kaiser-Guttman criterion), corroborated by scree plot inflection points and parallel analysis. The four latent factors accounted for approximately 49.6% of the total scale variance. Inter-factor correlations ranged between .38 and .62, supporting an oblique rather than orthogonal rotation, as intrapersonal and interpersonal emotional competencies naturally share underlying affective-cognitive variance.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Model Fit

Subsequent validation on independent hold-out samples (N = 614) evaluated multiple rival specifications using Maximum Likelihood estimation:

• Unidimensional Model: A single general emotional self-efficacy factor yielded poor fit indices (χ²/df = 4.82, RMSEA = .088, CFI = .79, TLI = .77, SRMR = .079).
• Original Adult 6-Factor Model: The Kirk et al. (2008) six-branch model yielded elevated error covariance and improper parameter estimates due to over-specification in adolescent samples.
• Empirical Four-Factor Oblique Model: The hypothesized four-factor model corresponding to the Dacre Pool and Qualter (2012a) framework demonstrated superior goodness-of-fit indices: χ²/df = 2.14, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = .045 (90% CI [.040, .050]), Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = .942, Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) = .935, and Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) = .048.

Factor Loadings and Latent Composition

Standardized item factor loadings across the four factors are uniformly robust:

• Using and Managing One’s Own Emotions: Items 3, 6, 8, 12, 14, 18, 20, 22, 26, and 30 load significantly onto Factor 1, with standardized coefficients ranging from .51 to .78.
• Identifying and Understanding One’s Own Emotions: Items 1, 4, 9, 11, 19, and 27 load onto Factor 2, with loadings ranging between .48 and .74.
• Dealing with Emotions in Others: Items 2, 7, 13, 15, 23, 24, 31, and 32 load onto Factor 3, displaying loadings between .56 and .81.
• Perceiving Emotion Through Facial Expressions and Body Language: Items 17, 21, and 25 define Factor 4, with loadings ranging from .52 to .72.

Unmodeled items (Items 5, 10, 16, 28, and 29) represent non-scoring exploratory or filler items retained during the transition from the adult item pool to maintain sequence integrity while eliminating items demonstrating developmental cross-loadings or inadequate linguistic comprehension in adolescent pilot studies.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The operational administration characteristics of the Emotional Self-Efficacy Scale for Youth are outlined below:

• Instrument Type: Standardized self-report psychometric rating scale / psychological questionnaire.
• Target Population: Children and young adolescents aged approximately 11 to 16 years (spanning late primary through secondary / middle to high school education).
• Administration Format: Individual or group pencil-and-paper questionnaire, or secure computer-based / online assessment system.
• Total Items: 32 total numbered entries (comprising 27 active scoring items and 5 non-scored/filler items: 5, 10, 16, 28, and 29).
• Administration Time: Approximately 8 to 15 minutes.
• Response Scale: 5-point Likert-type confidence scale:
• 1 = Not At All Confident
• 2 = A Little Confident
• 3 = Moderately Confident
• 4 = Quite Confident
• 5 = Very Confident
• Subscale Composition:
• Using and Managing your own emotions: 10 items (3, 6, 8, 12, 14, 18, 20, 22, 26, 30)
• Identifying and Understanding your own emotions: 6 items (1, 4, 9, 11, 19, 27)
• Dealing with Emotions in Others: 8 items (2, 7, 13, 15, 23, 24, 31, 32)
• Perceiving Emotion through Facial Expressions and Body Language: 3 items (17, 21, 25)
• Scoring Rules:
• All items are framed in a positive/adaptive direction; there are no reverse-coded items.
• Subscale scores are calculated by summing the response values of designated items or computing the mean score (ranging from 1.0 to 5.0) to facilitate cross-subscale comparison.
• A Total Emotional Self-Efficacy Score is computed by summing all 27 scored items (score range: 27 to 135) or calculating the composite mean across the 27 items.
• Higher scores indicate greater subjective confidence and self-efficacy in executing emotional competencies.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Emotional Self-Efficacy Scale for Youth (ESES-Y) was validated and published in 2014 by Pamela Qualter and colleagues in the Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment. It is an adaptation of the adult Emotional Self-Efficacy Scale originally developed in 2008 by Beverley A. Kirk, Nicola S. Schutte, and Donald W. Hine.

Permissions and Licensing: The ESES-Y is accessible for non-commercial academic research, pedagogical use, and educational evaluation free of charge. Researchers and practitioners may administer the scale without purchasing proprietary testing licenses, provided that full bibliographic attribution is maintained and the instrument’s item wording and scoring structure are preserved. Commercial licensing, integration into proprietary diagnostic software suites, or corporate commercial applications require written authorization from the primary copyright holders and corresponding authors. The full adaptation documentation is indexed on scientific repositories such as ResearchGate.

References

• Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191–215. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.84.2.191
• Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. W. H. Freeman and Company.
• Dacre Pool, L., & Qualter, P. (2012a). The dimensional structure of the Emotional Self-Efficacy Scale (ESES). Australian Journal of Psychology, 64(3), 147–154. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1742-9536.2011.00039.x
• Dacre Pool, L., & Qualter, P. (2012b). Improving emotional intelligence and emotional self-efficacy through a teaching intervention for university students. Learning and Individual Differences, 22(3), 306–312. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2012.01.010
• Kirk, B. A., Schutte, N. S., & Hine, D. W. (2008). Development and preliminary validation of an emotional self-efficacy scale. Personality and Individual Differences, 45(5), 432–436. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2008.06.010
• Kirk, B. A., Schutte, N. S., & Hine, D. W. (2011). The effect of an expressive-writing intervention for employees on emotional self-efficacy, emotional intelligence, affect, and workplace incivility. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 41(1), 179–195. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2010.00708.x
• Mayer, J. D., & Salovey, P. (1997). What is emotional intelligence? In P. Salovey & D. J. Sluyter (Eds.), Emotional development and emotional intelligence: Educational implications (pp. 3–34). Basic Books.
• Qualter, P., Dacre Pool, L., Gardner, K. J., Ashley-Kot, S., Wise, A., & Wols, A. (2015). The Emotional Self-Efficacy Scale: Adaptation and validation for young adolescents. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 33(1), 33–45. https://doi.org/10.1177/0734282914550383

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)