Ages & Stages Questionnaires: Social-Emotional, Second Edition (ASQ:SE)

Abstract

The Ages & Stages Questionnaires: Social-Emotional, Second Edition (ASQ:SE) is a widely utilized developmental questionnaire designed for the early identification and monitoring of concerns related to a child’s social and emotional development. This instrument is intended for use with infants, toddlers, and preschoolers, specifically covering the critical developmental period from 3 to 66 months of age. The ASQ:SE is distinguished by its parent-completed format, which relies on the primary caregiver’s intimate knowledge of the child’s daily behaviors and emotional responses to provide accurate screening results.

The scale is structured across eight age-specific forms, evaluating seven key domains of social-emotional functioning, making it an essential tool for pediatric, educational, and early intervention settings.

Keywords

Ages and Stages Questionnaire, ASQ:SE, Social-Emotional Development, Screening, Infant, Toddler, Preschooler, Parent-completed, Early Intervention, Psychometric properties

Authors

Jane Squires, Diane Bricker, T. P. Hogan

Purpose

The primary purpose of the ASQ:SE is targeted screening for potential social and emotional difficulties that may necessitate further clinical assessment or immediate early intervention services. It functions as a specialized component of the broader Ages & Stages Questionnaires (ASQ) system.

While the standard ASQ focuses on screening for five areas of developmental delays (communication, gross motor, fine motor, problem-solving, and personal-social skills), the ASQ:SE provides a deep, focused evaluation of behavioral and emotional competence within the same age range (4 to 60 months). This complementary approach allows professionals, including pediatricians, psychologists, and educators, to achieve a comprehensive and holistic view of the child’s developmental and emotional status.

Construct

The ASQ:SE measures the psychological construct of early childhood social-emotional competence. This construct is defined as the child’s capacity to initiate and maintain positive social relationships, experience and regulate emotions effectively, and explore the environment with confidence. The scale operationalizes this broad construct across seven critical behavioral domains.

These domains are used to structure the eight age-specific questionnaires and provide a detailed profile of the child’s functioning, ranging from internal regulatory mechanisms to external interpersonal interactions:

• Self-Regulation: The child’s ability to manage internal states, physiological needs (e.g., sleep, feeding), and emotional reactions.
• Compliance: The degree to which the child follows rules, directions, and behavioral expectations set by caregivers.
• Communication: How the child expresses needs, emotions, and intentions in a socially appropriate manner.
• Adaptive Functioning: The use of skills necessary for daily living related to emotional and social needs (e.g., comforting oneself).
• Autonomy: The development of independence, self-initiated actions, and separation behaviors.
• Affect: The range, intensity, and appropriateness of emotional expression and general mood.
• Interaction with People: The quality, frequency, and nature of the child’s engagement with peers and adults.

Validity

The psychometric properties of the ASQ:SE were rigorously examined using data derived from 3,014 individuals who completed the questionnaires, with 1,041 children specifically included in validity studies. A primary focus was the establishment of concurrent validity, comparing the ASQ:SE results against established, gold-standard clinical instruments.

The ASQ:SE demonstrated strong agreement when compared concurrently with both the Vineland Social Emotional Early Childhood Scale (SEEC) and the Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). The overall agreement across these comparisons was reported at .93, with individual comparison values ranging favorably from .81 to .95. Crucially, the scale demonstrated high diagnostic accuracy: Sensitivity, reflecting the ability to correctly identify children experiencing social-emotional difficulties, ranged from .71 to .85, yielding an overall value of .78. Specificity, indicating the ability to correctly identify children without social-emotional difficulties, was exceptionally high, ranging from .90 to .98, with an impressive overall value of .95.

Reliability

While the source content emphasizes diagnostic accuracy metrics (sensitivity and specificity), these high values strongly support the instrument’s clinical reliability and predictive consistency. High specificity (.95) confirms that the scale reliably screens out children who are typically developing, minimizing false positives, which is critical in screening tools.

For a complete psychometric profile, researchers typically also examine internal consistency (measuring how well items within a domain correlate) and test-retest reliability (measuring stability of scores over time). The robust concurrent validity achieved through agreement with measures like the CBCL suggests that the ASQ:SE provides a stable and consistent measure of the underlying social and emotional development construct.

Factor Analysis

Formal details regarding confirmatory or exploratory factor analysis are not provided in the source content. However, the scale is explicitly structured around a multi-factor model that aligns with the seven distinct domains of social-emotional functioning listed in the construct section. The development of eight separate questionnaires, each tailored to specific age windows (6, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 48, and 60 months), implies that the factor structure may vary slightly across developmental stages, reflecting the changing nature of social-emotional priorities as the child matures.

Instrument

Test Type: Screening and Monitoring Tool

Format: Parent-Completed Questionnaire (Eight age-specific forms)

Language Available: English, Spanish, and often translated into multiple other languages (e.g., French, Vietnamese, Chinese) depending on the regional distributor.

Population Group: Infants, Toddlers, and Preschoolers

Age Group: 3 months to 66 months

Population Details: Normed on a large and diverse sample (N=3,014 for psychometric foundation) representing various socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds across the United States.

Test Methodology: Caregivers respond to questions based on their direct observation of the child’s behavior over the previous month. Responses are scored, and cutoff points are used to flag children who may be at risk for social-emotional difficulties, triggering the need for referral or further assessment.

Keywords

Psychometrics, Concurrent Validity, Sensitivity, Specificity, Vineland Social Emotional Early Childhood Scale, Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist, Developmental Delay, Self-Regulation, Affect

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not publicly available in source material.

Affiliation Email addresses: Contact publisher (Brookes Publishing) for current information.

Correspondence Address: Contact Brookes Publishing for official correspondence routes regarding the scale authors.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Ages & Stages Questionnaires: Social-Emotional, Second Edition (ASQ:SE) is a proprietary instrument owned and distributed by Brookes Publishing. Use requires purchase and licensing, with fees varying based on the format (paper vs. digital, e.g., ASQ Online) and the volume of questionnaires required. The foundational psychometric properties studies and initial publications for the materials referenced in this entry occurred primarily between 2002 and 2005.

Reference’s

1. Squires, J., & Hogan, T. P. (Eds.). (2005). Ages & Stages Questionnaires: A Parent Completed, Child-Monitoring System, Second Edition. In Comprehensive Directory of Assessment Products for Health, Mental Health, Rehabilitation, and Counseling Settings (Vol. 2005).
2. Squires, J., & Hogan, T. P. (Eds.). (2003). Ages & Stages Questionnaires: Social Emotional: A Parent-Completed, Child Monitoring System for Social-Emotional Behaviors. In Comprehensive Directory of Assessment Products for Health, Mental Health, Rehabilitation, and Counseling Settings (Vol. 2003).
3. Hogan, T. P. (Ed.). (2003). Ages & Stages Questionnaires: Social-Emotional: A Parent-Completed, Child Monitoring System for Social-Emotional Behaviors. In Comprehensive Directory of Assessment Products for Health, Mental Health, Rehabilitation, and Counseling Settings (Vol. 2003).
4. Vacca, J. J. (2003). Review of the Ages & Stages Questionnaires: Social-Emotional: A Parent-Completed, Child-Monitoring System for Social-Emotional Behaviors. In T. P. Hogan (Ed.), Comprehensive Directory of Assessment Products for Health, Mental Health, Rehabilitation, and Counseling Settings (Vol. 2003).
5. Hogan, T. P. (Ed.). (2002). Ages & Stages Questionnaires: Social-Emotional. In Comprehensive Directory of Assessment Products for Health, Mental Health, Rehabilitation, and Counseling Settings (Vol. 2002).
6. Vacca, J. J. (2002). Review of Ages & Stages Questionnaires: Social-Emotional. In T. P. Hogan (Ed.), Comprehensive Directory of Assessment Products for Health, Mental Health, Rehabilitation, and Counseling Settings (Vol. 2002).

Items of the Ages & Stages Questionnaires: Social-Emotional, Second Edition (ASQ:SE)

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

The ASQ:SE is comprised of eight questionnaires corresponding to different age levels (6, 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 48, and 60 months). The questionnaire examines seven key areas of social-emotional development:

• Self-Regulation
• Compliance
• Communication
• Adaptive Functioning
• Autonomy
• Affect
• Interaction with People