Direct assessment of social emotions and mathematics
The study utilized the International Development and Early Learning
Assessment (IDELA), developed by Save the Children (Halpin et al.,
2019), to measure children’s development, encompassing various domains
such as social emotions, mathematics, executive function, and literacy.
The scale is evidenced by extensive validation studies in China (Huang
& Siraj, 2023) .
For the current study, we specifically focused on social emotions and
mathematics. The social emotions assessment comprises five dimensions:
personal awareness, friendships, emotional awareness, empathy, and
sharing. Scores range from 0 to 25, with higher scores indicating better
SE. Meanwhile, the mathematics assessment includes seven items,
including comparison by size and length, sorting and classification,
shape identification, number recognition, number sense, addition and
subtraction, and puzzle completion. Scores range from 0 to 47, with
higher scores indicating better mathematics. Each child was measured by
2 RA, one of which took the main test in this study, and after reaching
an agreement on the test scores, the other RA recorded the scores.
Both the social emotions and mathematics demonstrated strong validity in
the current study. The validation for the social emotions scale was as
follows: x²/df = 1.98, CFI = 0.95, TLI = 0.934, SRMR = 0.054, RMSEA =
0.06, with α of 0.658. Similarly, mathematics scale’s validation was as
follows: x²/df = 1.19, CFI = 0.905, TLI = 0.993, SRMR = 0.026, RMSEA =
0.026, also with α of 0.658.