The Children’s Social Comprehension Scale (CSCS): Construct validity of a new social intelligence measure for elementary school children

Abstract

The abilities comprising social intelligence are critical to children’s development and interpersonal functioning, and there is a need for reliable and valid tools for measuring them. This paper describes the Children’s Social Comprehension Scale (CSCS), which is a performance-based test of the cognitive component of social intelligence for young schoolchildren. The CSCS was developed as an easy-to-use and rapid screening tool for diagnosing deficits in social information processing, such as understanding and evaluation of social situations. The final version of the instrument exhibits satisfactory score reliability as measured by Cronbach’s alpha and acceptable factorial validity of results as determined by confirmatory factor analysis for each of the studied age groups (6–7, 8–9, and 10–11 years; N = 358). The validity of the CSCS results is also corroborated by its positive correlations with other measures of social intelligence (stronger), intellectual potential (weaker), and an indicator of effective social functioning. The scores on the test show age differences in the expected direction. All these findings suggest that the CSCS is valid and reliable measure of cognitive social intelligence in children.