EXAMINING THE FACTOR STRUCTURE OF AN EARLY CHILDHOOD SOCIAL EMOTIONAL SCREENING ASSESSMENT

Introduction: The Ages & Stages Questionnaires: Social-Emotional (ASQ:SE) has been recommended for screening young children for social-emotional delays in pediatric practices and other early childhood settings. While many psychometric properties of the ASQ:SE have been examined, the factorial structure of the instrument has not as yet been comprehensively investigated. This study examined the factorial structure of the ASQ:SE in order to establish its construct validity, including study of all eight age intervals. Method: A total of 13,718 child/parent dyads participated in the study in the United States, completing one ASQ:SE test interval. ASQ:SE is a screening instrument exclusively focusing on social-emotional competence in 3-to-66 month old children. A series of eight questionnaires at different age intervals (i.e., 6-, 12-, 18-, 24-, 30-, 36-, 48-, and 60-month) make up the content. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted to evaluate the number of factors that should be retained, factorial structures, and item loading on factors. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to further examine the goodness-of-fit of the fit model to data, based on the exploratory factor analysis result. Results: One-factor and two-factor structure models were suggested by the exploratory factor analysis results depending on the age intervals. Confirmatory factor analysis indicted that a two-factor structure model was a better fit than a one-factor structure for all intervals. Conclusion: The items representing social-emotional competence in the ASQ:SE can be classified in two highly correlated clusters, labeled as Emotion and Sociality. The findings supported the construct validity of the ASQ:SE, measured the intended underlying constructs.