A Systematic Review of Universal Screening Measures for Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Strengths and Concerns

Universal screening for social, emotional, and behavioral strengths and concerns is a critical component of a multitiered systems of support framework. To ensure psychometrically defensible and equitable screening practices, schools must adopt screening measures with strong evidence for their intended use. In this review, we systematically describe available universal social, emotional, and behavioral screening measures’ features psychometric evidence, and evidence for use with culturally and linguistically diverse students, specifically within the framework of the Consensus-Based Standards for the Selection of Health Measurement Instruments. Our search process resulted in the identification of 79 measures across 186 studies within 170 records. We describe the features of these measures and synthesize psychometric evidence, concluding that measures with a wide range of features and evidence are available; however, evidence is largely limited to select measurement properties. This underscores the importance of the evidence-based selection of measures and expanded inquiry into the technical adequacy of measures with diverse populations.