For Children and Youth
Student Emotion Regulation Assessment
The SERA is a new direct assessment that measures students’ use of various emotion regulation strategies (e.g., problem solving, emotional support-seeking, somatic relaxation, distraction, rumination, and experiencing the emotion) to deal with emotional situations that commonly occur in school.
There are two versions of the SERA: the SERA-P for use with students in grades 1-5 and the SERA-S for use with students in grades 6-12. In both versions, students are presented with age-appropriate vignettes (see examples below) and asked how they would respond in these situations. Both versions are computer-based, illustrated, and narrated to enhance student engagement and accessibility.
The purpose of the SERA is to (1) enhance educators’ awareness and understanding of their students’ emotion regulation strategy use and competency; (2) increase adolescent students’ awareness of their own emotion regulation strategy use and knowledge of effective emotion regulation strategies; and (3) provide guidance to educators on how to support their students’ development of effective emotion regulation strategies in classroom settings. To meet these goals, we are conducting research to ensure that the SERA has strong psychometric quality, is feasible for schools to use, and has high utility.
Ng, Z. J., Willner, C. J., Mannweiler, M. D., Hoffmann, J. D., Bailey, C. S., & Cipriano, C. (2022). A systematic review of emotion regulation assessments in U.S. schools: Bridging the gap between researchers and educators. Educational Psychology Review.
Willner, C. J., Hoffmann, J. D., Bailey, C. S., Harrison, A. P., Garcia, B., Ng, Z. J., Cipriano, C., Brackett, M. A. (2022). The development of cognitive reappraisal from early childhood through adolescence: A systematic review and methodological recommendations. Frontiers In Psychology, 13, DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.875964.
Publications
Ng, Z. J., Willner, C. J., & Mannweiler, M. D. (August 2021). The Student Emotion Regulation Assessment: A tool for measuring students' emotion regulation skills. Poster presented at the 2021 annual convention of the American Psychological Association (virtual conference).
Mannweiler, M. D., Willner, C. J., Harrison, A. P., Ng, Z., Hoffman, J. D., Bailey, C. S., Cipriano, C., Brackett, M. A. (August 2021). Age-related differences in students’ emotion regulation strategy endorsement patterns. Poster presented at the 2021 annual convention of the American Psychological Association (virtual conference).
Ng, Z. J., Willner, C. J., Cipriano, C., & Brackett, M. (April 2021). A review of emotion regulation assessment in schools. Poster presentation (virtual) at the 2021 biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development.
Mannweiler, M., Willner., C. J., Ng, Z. J., Hoffmann, J., & Brackett, M. (April 2021). Educators systematically over-predict student anxiety in response to hypothetical vignettes. Poster presentation (virtual) at the 2021 biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development.
Willner, C. J., Hoffmann, J. D., Bailey, C. S., Ng, Z. J., Harrison, A. P., Garcia, B., & Brackett, M. A. (April 2020). Developing an objective assessment of students' emotion regulation for use in elementary school through high school. Presentation accepted for the 2020 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA (conference canceled).
Willner, C. J. (2019). Directly assessing students’ emotion regulation skills in elementary school through high school. Presentation at the CASEL Social & Emotional Learning Exchange 2019, Chicago, IL.