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.