Members of the UVA Social Development Lab have developed several measures that are available to others for use in the field. There is no cost for using these measures; we do ask, of course, that you cite these measures properly.

The Survey of Early School Adjustment Difficulty assesses students’ difficulty with the adjustment to school. This measure is especially practical to measure children’s difficulty with the transition to kindergarten or transition to first grade during the first three weeks of school. This teacher-report measure, developed by Rimm-Kaufman, Nathanson and Brock, was based on the Transition Practices Survey developed by the National Center for Early Development and Learning (Rimm-Kaufman, Pianta, & Cox, 2000). The questionnaire includes 11 common problems associated with transition difficulty. For example, questions include, “This child lacks academic skills,” or “This child has shown difficulty working as part of a group.” Teachers respond to these statements using a 1 to 5 scale. Read More »

The Teacher Belief Q-Sort (TBQ) measures three aspects of teachers’ beliefs and priorities: Discipline and Behavior Management, Teaching Practices, and Beliefs about Students. The TBQ method offers the opportunity to describe characteristics of teachers as well as compare a group of teachers’ beliefs and priorities to an “ideal” teacher. The TBQ is particularly effective at assessing teachers’ priorities and beliefs as they change during the process of implementation of a new intervention. Read More »

The measure can be administered using a paper or a web-based interface. Contact the Social Development Lab at uva-sdl@virginia.edu for an account to use the electronic version or for a copy of the paper version. If you’re interested in testing out the electronic version of the TBQ, there is a demo version available online. When you are prompted to enter your Teacher ID just substitute it for your current email address. Click here to go to a demo version of the TBQ>>

The Observed Child Engagement Scale (OCES) is an observationally-based rating scale designed to assess children’s behavioral engagement in learning in primary grade classroom environments. The behavioral codes were adapted from the NICHD-ECCRN Classroom Observation Scale (NICHD, 2005) based on extensive pilot observations in kindergarten and first grade classrooms. These scales include five dimensions including compliance, engagement, self-reliance, attention, and disruptive behavior (reverse scaled). Read More »