The revised version of the retracted article: The development and preliminary validation of a social-emotional skills assessment instrument for Estonian lower secondary school students

Given the necessity of existence of comprehensive and psychometrically sound instruments that measure students' social-emotional skills (SE skills) in the school context and on a facet level, this study aims to develop and evaluate an SE skills assessment instrument for lower secondary school students. The initial version of the instrument was developed based on the descriptions of the SE skills from the frameworks by Primi et al. (2017) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; Chernyshenko et al., 2018) and it consisted of 48 items. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted with a sample of 204 students from Estonia, and a nine-factor instrument with 34 items was refined. This model was confirmed with acceptable fitness by CFA with another sample of 521 students. Scalar measurement invariance was established between grade groups (grades 6 and 9). In conclusion, while the instrument enables assessing students' SE skills in lower-secondary schools, further research is required.