Social-emotional skills are abilities that help individuals manage emotions, set goals, maintain relationships, and make responsible decisions.
These skills include self-awareness, empathy, cooperation, and resilience. Studying these skills in young people is crucial because they form the foundation for mental health, academic success, and future life outcomes.
Understanding how these skills develop and interact can inform educational practices and interventions to support healthy social-emotional growth in children and adolescents.
Huo, M., & Ning, B. (2024). Mapping the maze: A network analysis of social–emotional skills among children and adolescents with social–emotional difficulties. British Journal of Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12751
Key Points
- The study used network analysis to explore social-emotional skills among children (10-year-olds) and adolescents (15-year-olds) with social-emotional difficulties.
- Optimism and cooperation emerged as the most central skills in social-emotional networks for both age groups.
- The social-emotional skill networks showed significant differences between children and adolescents, with adolescents having denser, more interconnected networks.
- Certain skills like energy became more central in adolescence, while others like emotional control decreased in centrality.
- The study found developmental changes in how different social-emotional skills are associated with each other from childhood to adolescence.
- This research provides insights into the structure and development of social-emotional competence in children and adolescents facing challenges in this area.
- The findings have implications for developing targeted social-emotional learning programs for youth with difficulties.
- Limitations include the cross-sectional design and focus on only the bottom quartile of social-emotional skills.
Rationale
Developing social-emotional skills is crucial for children and adolescents, particularly those experiencing social and emotional difficulties.
Previous research has demonstrated the short-term and lifelong benefits of social-emotional skills for well-being, academic engagement, and professional achievements (Durlak et al., 2011; Steinmayr et al., 2018).
However, approximately 10-20% of children and adolescents experience social-emotional difficulties, which can lead to significant barriers in learning, social integration, and mental health (Perou et al., 2013; Sawyer et al., 2018).
Despite recognizing the critical role of these skills, current knowledge remains insufficient in capturing the complexities and mutual dependencies of social-emotional skills.
To address this gap, the study adopted a complex systems approach using network analysis to explore the interactions between individual social-emotional skills.
This approach allows for evaluating individual relationships between skills, assessing the importance of each skill, and comparing networks among children and adolescents.
By exploring the networks of social-emotional skills among children and adolescents with difficulties, this study aimed to gain insight into the developmental changes in social-emotional skills.
This understanding is crucial for educators and practitioners to more effectively support the social-emotional development of children and adolescents experiencing difficulties.
Method
The study utilized data from the 2019 Survey of Social and Emotional Skills (SSES) organized by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
It focused on children (10-year-olds) and adolescents (15-year-olds) from 10 cities in 9 countries.
The researchers applied network analysis to examine the structure of social-emotional skill networks, identify central skills, and compare networks between age cohorts.
Procedure
The study design was cross-sectional, comparing two age cohorts. Participants completed self-report measures of 15 social-emotional skills.
The researchers focused on the bottom quartile (lowest 25%) of participants based on their sum scores across all social-emotional skills to represent those with social-emotional difficulties.
Sample
The final sample consisted of 7737 10-year-olds and 7439 15-year-olds from diverse geographic locations.
Gender distribution was relatively balanced, with girls being predominant in the older cohort.
Approximately 28-29% of parents had tertiary education.
Measures
The SSES framework assessed 15 social-emotional skills across five domains: task performance, emotional regulation, collaboration, open-mindedness, and engaging with others.
Each skill was evaluated using eight items on a 5-point Likert scale.
Statistical measures
The study employed network analysis techniques, including:
- Graphical Gaussian Model (GGM) for network estimation
- Graphical least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (GLASSO) for regularization
- Extended Bayesian Information Criterion (EBIC) for determining optimal shrinkage
- Average predictability and Expected Influence (EI) for network evaluation
- Non-parametric bootstrapping and case-dropping subset bootstraps for assessing network accuracy and stability
- Network Comparison Tests (NCTs) for examining differences between age cohorts
Results
Hypothesis 1: There will be differences in the network structures of social-emotional skills between children and adolescents with social-emotional difficulties.
Result: Confirmed. The Network Comparison Test revealed significant differences in the structure of social-emotional skills networks between children and adolescents (p < .05).
Hypothesis 2: The overall connectivity of social-emotional networks will be stronger in adolescents compared to children.
Result: Confirmed. Adolescents displayed significantly higher global strength in their social-emotional networks compared to children (8.84 vs. 7.66, p < .05).
Hypothesis 3: Central skills in the social-emotional networks will differ between children and adolescents.
Result: Partially confirmed. Optimism and cooperation were the most central skills for both age groups.
However, some skills showed significant changes in centrality. For example, energy became significantly more central in adolescents (p < .01), while emotional control decreased in centrality (p < .01).
Hypothesis 4: The strength of associations between specific social-emotional skills will change from childhood to adolescence.
Result: Confirmed. The edge strength invariance test identified 39 out of 105 edges as significantly different between the two age groups.
For instance, the association between responsibility and persistence strengthened in adolescence (p < .01), while the association between responsibility and emotional control weakened (p < .01).
Insight
This study provides valuable insights into the structure and development of social-emotional competence in children and adolescents facing social-emotional challenges.
The identification of optimism and cooperation as central skills across both age groups highlights their importance in social-emotional functioning.
This finding extends previous research by emphasizing the role of these skills specifically for youth with social-emotional difficulties.
The observed differences in network structures between children and adolescents suggest that social-emotional competence undergoes significant changes during this developmental period.
The denser, more interconnected networks in adolescents indicate that social-emotional skills become more integrated and mutually influential as individuals mature.
This finding aligns with and extends previous research on the developmental changes in social-emotional competence (Bleidorn et al., 2022; Soto et al., 2011).
The study’s network approach offers a novel perspective on how different social-emotional skills relate to each other and how these relationships evolve from childhood to adolescence.
For instance, the increasing centrality of energy in adolescence and the strengthening of certain skill associations (e.g., responsibility and persistence) provide new insights into the developmental trajectories of social-emotional competence.
Future research could benefit from longitudinal designs to track individual changes in social-emotional networks over time.
Additionally, exploring how these networks differ across various cultural contexts or comparing them with youth without social-emotional difficulties could further enhance our understanding of social-emotional development.
Implications
The findings of this study have significant implications for clinical practice and future research in the field of social-emotional development.
For clinical practice, the identification of optimism and cooperation as central skills suggests that interventions targeting these areas may have far-reaching effects on overall social-emotional competence for children and adolescents with difficulties.
Practitioners could develop targeted programs that focus on enhancing these skills, potentially leading to improvements across the broader spectrum of social-emotional functioning.
The observed developmental differences in social-emotional networks highlight the need for age-specific approaches in social-emotional learning programs.
For instance, interventions for adolescents might focus more on integrating various social-emotional skills, given the denser networks observed in this age group.
Additionally, the increasing centrality of certain skills (e.g., energy) in adolescence suggests that interventions could be tailored to emphasize different skills at different developmental stages.
For future research, this study demonstrates the value of network analysis in understanding the complex interplay of social-emotional skills.
Researchers could extend this approach to examine how social-emotional networks change over time using longitudinal designs, or how they differ across various cultural contexts.
Furthermore, comparing the networks of youth with and without social-emotional difficulties could provide insights into how these challenges manifest in the structure of social-emotional competence.
The findings also underscore the need for more nuanced assessment tools that can capture the interconnected nature of social-emotional skills.
Future research could focus on developing assessment methods that not only measure individual skills but also evaluate how these skills interact and influence each other.
Strengths
The study had many methodological strengths including:
- Large, diverse sample from multiple countries, enhancing generalizability
- Use of advanced network analysis techniques to capture complex relationships between skills
- Focus on children and adolescents with social-emotional difficulties, an understudied population
- Comprehensive assessment of 15 social-emotional skills across five domains
- Rigorous statistical approaches, including bootstrapping for network accuracy and stability
- Comparison of networks between two distinct developmental stages (childhood and adolescence)
Limitations
The study had several limitations that should be considered when interpreting the results:
- Cross-sectional design: Prevents drawing causal conclusions about the development of social-emotional networks over time
- Focus on bottom quartile: Limits generalizability to the broader population of children and adolescents
- Self-report measures: May introduce bias, particularly for younger participants who may have limited self-awareness
- Lack of specific measures to detect random or dishonest responses: Could affect data integrity
- Geographic limitations: While the sample included participants from multiple countries, it may not be fully representative of all cultural contexts
- Potential cohort effects: The developmental differences observed may be influenced by cohort effects rather than true developmental changes
- Limited comparison groups: The study did not compare results with youth without social-emotional difficulties
References
Primary reference
Huo, M., & Ning, B. (2024). Mapping the maze: A network analysis of social–emotional skills among children and adolescents with social–emotional difficulties. British Journal of Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12751
Other references
Bleidorn, W., Hopwood, C. J., Back, M. D., Denissen, J. J., Hennecke, M., Jokela, M., … & Zimmermann, J. (2020). Longitudinal experience–wide association studies—A framework for studying personality change. European Journal of Personality, 34(3), 285-300. https://doi.org/10.1002/per.2247
Durlak, J. A., Weissberg, R. P., Dymnicki, A. B., Taylor, R. D., & Schellinger, K. B. (2011). The impact of enhancing students’ social and emotional learning: A meta‐analysis of school‐based universal interventions. Child development, 82(1), 405-432. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01564.x
Perou, R., Bitsko, R. H., Blumberg, S. J., Pastor, P., Ghandour, R. M., Gfroerer, J. C., … & Huang, L. N. (2013). Mental health surveillance among children—United States, 2005–2011. MMWR Supplements, 62(2), 1-35.
Sawyer, M. G., Reece, C. E., Sawyer, A. C., Johnson, S. E., & Lawrence, D. (2018). Has the prevalence of child and adolescent mental disorders in Australia changed between 1998 and 2013 to 2014?. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 57(5), 343-350. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2018.02.012
Soto, C. J., John, O. P., Gosling, S. D., & Potter, J. (2011). Age differences in personality traits from 10 to 65: Big Five domains and facets in a large cross-sectional sample.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100(2), 330–348. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021717
Steinmayr, R., Weidinger, A. F., & Wigfield, A. (2018). Does students’ grit predict their school achievement above and beyond their personality, motivation, and engagement?. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 53, 106-122. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2018.02.004
Keep Learning
Socratic questions for a college class to discuss this paper:
- How might the central role of optimism and cooperation in social-emotional networks inform the development of intervention programs for youth with social-emotional difficulties?
- What are the potential implications of the observed developmental differences in social-emotional networks for educational practices in elementary versus high schools?
- How might cultural factors influence the structure and development of social-emotional networks? How could future research address this question?
- What are the ethical considerations in focusing research on children and adolescents with social-emotional difficulties? How can we balance the need for targeted research with the risk of stigmatization?
- How might the network approach to social-emotional skills change our understanding of individual differences in social-emotional competence?
- What are the potential limitations of relying on self-report measures for assessing social-emotional skills, particularly in younger children? How might these be addressed in future research?
- How might the findings of this study inform the debate about the malleability of social-emotional skills across different developmental stages?
- In what ways could the network approach to social-emotional skills complement or challenge existing theories of social-emotional development?
