Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Assessment Within Tiered Decision-Making Frameworks: Advancing Research Through Reflections on the Past Decade

Abstract

Schools play a critical role in service delivery related to students’ social, emotional, and behavioral (SEB) health. A foundation for effective SEB service delivery includes capacity to identify students in need of support, differentiate which supports are needed, and monitor students’ responsiveness to intervention. Assessment is critical for each of these goals, providing the data needed to make effective decisions across the continuum of service delivery. This special issue provides opportunity to reflect on the past decade of research that strengthens the psychometric evidence for use of the measures in SEB assessment, as well as address several themes that characterize recent SEB assessment research. In this introductory article, we introduce a series of original articles and commentaries addressing these critical issues that are timely and relevant for the future path of SEB assessment. Taken together, the current issue seeks to bring together current evidence around multitiered problem-solving frameworks with focus on SEB domain and propose future directions for research and practice.