Assessment of Social Competence in High-Risk Preschoolers: Evaluation of the Adaptive Social Behavior Inventory (ASBI) across Home and School Settings

Abstract

This study evaluates the Adaptive Social Behavior Inventory (ASBI) for assessing pre-school children's social competence across home and school settings. Data were collected on a multi-ethnic sample of 191 3- to 5-year-old children attending Head Start centers. Parents, teachers, and teacher aides rated children similarly on the three ASBI subscales: Express, Comply, and Disrupt. Although two of the three scales, Express and Disrupt, produced statistically significant mean differences, these differences were relatively small given the range of possible scores and were not consistently related to context, with parents and aides differing from teachers on the Disrupt scale. Correlations across the home-school context were moderate and statistically significant. In addition, canonical correlation analysis examining the relationship between ASBI parent and teacher reports revealed significant matches between hypothesized like factors, suggesting congruence between parent and teacher ratings across home and school contexts. The use of measures of social competence such as the ASBI that provide a common language by which parents and teachers may jointly review children's social competence and thereby encourage parent involvement and shared decision making is discussed, along with implications for developing similar home-school congruence in other important domains of development.