Introduction to the SEAM
The Social Emotional Assessment Measure (SEAM) is the initial step in the creation of a curriculum-based assessment measure focused on the social emotional development of young children. The SEAM is the assessment piece and if found, to be reliable, valid, and useful, an associated curriculum will be developed. Consequently, the end target is a CBA; however, the SEAM is the initial step.
The SEAM is the first stage in the development of a curriculum-based assessment measure. The creation of the SEAM was one of the outcomes from an OSEP research grant (#324D020014) to Center on Human Development, University of Oregon. This project investigated the effects of an intervention model that employed the use of a mental health mentor to guide the work of home visitors delivering services to young children with disabilities. Because no suitable CBA existed, the SEAM was developed to provide a comprehensive picture of a child's social emotional repertoire. This information can assist teachers and child care works in identifying social emotional problems or potential problems and to provide guidance in the development of quality goals and intervention activities.
The SEAM is composed of two different age intervals: infants with a developmental range of 3 to 18 months, and toddlers with a developmental range of 18 to 36 months. Although somewhat arbitrary divisions, there do appear to be some important developmental shifts or reorganizations that occur within these time intervals (Sroufe, 1996; Cicchetti, & Cohen, 1995). It is important to emphasize that these intervals refer to developmental ages and not chronological ages.
The SEAM focuses on: key child social emotional behaviors and key adult/caregiver behaviors. The items were derived from 10 key child benchmarks (i.e., each benchmark has a set of associated items) and 4 key adult/caregiver benchmarks. Table 2 contains a list of the child and adult/caregiver benchmarks. These benchmarks represent key social emotional constructs that were derived from the literature on young children's social emotional competence. Each assessment item associated with a benchmark is designed to address that benchmark and importantly, each item can also be selected as an intervention goal. A set of specific criteria were used to formulate the assessment items including: 1) items must be functional, 2) meaningful, 3) observable/measurable, 4) easily embedded into daily activities, 5) written in jargon free language, and 6) could serve as an intervention goal.
These six criteria resulted in the elimination of many child-focused items that frequently appear on diagnostic measures such as child clings to parent; child hits and bites other children. Targeting negative responses as intervention goals is not appropriate; rather the reciprocal positive response should be the intervention target.
The infant and toddler SEAM intervals follow a consistent format. The cover sheet has space for entering identifying information and instructions for completing the SEAM. Each item is followed by three response boxes: most of the time, sometimes, rarely or never plus a column to indicate concerns and one to indicate intervention goal. For the child benchmarks, the response boxes can be used to record whether the child engages in the behavior on a regular basis (i.e., most of the time), sometimes or inconsistently engages in the behavior (i.e., sometimes), or rarely or never engages in the behavior can be chosen if the child does not exhibit the behavior or rarely engages in the behavior. The concern column can be used to indicate if the caregiver and/or professional see the behavior as a concern while the intervention goal column can be checked if the item is selected as a potential intervention target. A similar scoring system is used for the adult/caregiver benchmarks.
The SEAM has undergone preliminary field testing by gathering information from two sources. First, the intervention staff of the research project described briefly above used the SEAM with 20 children and parents. Second, a cadre of graduate students used the SEAM with 25 infants and toddlers with and without disabilities. Caregivers/parents in these field studies have responded that targeting one or two goals has been helpful and made their concerns about their young child's behavior seem more manageable. Parents have also expressed high satisfaction with the SEAM because they have felt that their main concerns, often about social emotional issues, have been ignored by early interventionists focused on developmental outcomes such as walking and fine motor control (Cutler & Gilkerson, 2002).
Information gathered from these two sources permitted the following actions: some items were eliminated because they could not be reliably observed, some items were added because important areas needed more emphasis, and some items were re-written to improve their clarity. Both intervention staff and students reported that based on their preliminary findings: the SEAM appeared to identify social emotional and behavioral problems and offered assistance in developing goals and intervention activities.