mySAEBRS

SEB plays a key role in all students’ achievement. Students’ social skills and behaviors are directly linked to their ability to learn and succeed in school. This includes:    

• The presence of skills that help students successfully learn and relate to others  

• The absence of behaviors that can cause barriers to learning and developing healthy relationships   

Student growth and success is predicated not just upon acquisition of academic skills, but also success within multiple inter-related behavioral domains. Like academic skill assessments, valid and reliable SEB assessments provide insight into critical academic enabling skills that, if not developed, may present barriers to academic achievement.    When students are safe, healthy, supported, engaged, and challenged, they are more likely to experience positive academic outcomes and long-term success.

• Increasing students’ social and emotional competence supports their ability to succeed in school and life  

• Students with strong social and emotional competence have fewer behavior issues in the classroom and are better able to manage stress and depression  

The Social, Academic, and Emotional Behavior Risk Screener (mySAEBRS) is an evidence-based assessment that allows students to self-assess their social, academic, and emotional behavior competencies. It is appropriate for students in grades 2–12 and is administered 1–3 times a year. It is available in both English and Spanish.

Students complete the self-assessment by rating the frequency of their behaviors in the previous month, using a rating scale of Never, Sometimes, Often, and Almost Always. Students answer 20 questions from the three interrelated domains below:  

SAEBRS data can be used to assess students’ general, social, academic, and emotional behaviors. Data can also be useful in program evaluation and in determining how students may be best supported at Tier 1. For instance, the data can be used to indicate whether a school should invest in the support of teacher classroom management practices, given the prevalence of social behavioral concerns, or in the instruction of academic enabling skills given the noted extent of academic behavioral difficulties.

It is important to note that a student’s score on the SAEBRS and mySAEBRS should never be used as the sole determinant of overall risk or intervention services. Instead, these scores should be examined by a team consisting of the student’s teacher(s), counselor, psychologist, administrative leader, and others who know the student well. SAEBRS and mySAEBRS must be compared with other sources of information about the student’s behaviors in order to confirm the presence of risk and the need for support.

The SAEBRS was designed to be a brief and contextually relevant screener of student risk for emotional and behavioral problems. The screener is comprised of 19 items, each of which relates to a broad factor (General Behavior) and three narrow factors: Social Behavior (6 items), Academic Behavior (6 items), and Emotional Behavior (7 items). In accordance with the principles of prevention science, each factor corresponds to various risk and protective factors suggested by developmental psychological research to predict the development of emotional/behavioral disorders. A teacher completes the SAEBRS for an individual student with whom the teacher has a history of interactions. Ratings correspond to the frequency with which the teacher has observed various maladaptive and adaptive behaviors in the previous month (Never, Sometimes, Often, Almost Always). It is estimated that it takes approximately 3-5 minutes to complete the measure for each student.

The SAEBRS was developed for use in universal screening for behavioral and emotional risk. The measure falls within a broad class of highly efficient tools, suitable for teacher use in evaluating and rating all students on common behavioral criteria (Severson, Walker, Hope-Doolittle, Kratochwill, & Gresham, 2007). The SAEBRS is grounded within a conceptual model, which states that a student’s success in school is not only related to his or her academic achievement, but also success within multiple behavioral domains. Research suggests the SAEBRS may be used to evaluate student functioning in terms of general behavior, as assessed by broad a Total Behavior scale. Research further suggests the SAEBRS may be used to evaluate student behavior within multiple inter-related narrow domains, as assessed by the Social Behavior, Academic Behavior, and Emotional Behavior sub-scales (Kilgus, Chafouleas, & Riley-Tillman, 2013; Kilgus, Eklund, von der Embse, & Taylor, 2014; Kilgus, Sims, von der Embse, & Riley-Tillman, 2014).

The SAEBRS and mySAEBRS norms are the basis of the corresponding benchmarks. The benchmarks were created by identifying cut scores from the SAEBRS and mySAEBRS norms. These benchmarks have been defined as follows:

• Low risk: scores above the 16th national percentile 
• Some risk: scores from the 3rd to the 16th national percentile
• High risk: scores below the 3rd national percentile 

These cut scores represent approximately 1 and 2 standard deviations below the national mean, which is consistent with the approach used by other behavior screening tools. Our research suggests that these new scores still perform well in predicting risk for social and emotional behavior (SEB) problems. 

The benchmarks for the total score as well as the Social, Academic, and Behavior subscales are provided in the table below. It is important to note that a student’s score on the SAEBRS and mySAEBRS should never be used as the sole determinant of overall risk or intervention services. Instead, these scores should be examined by a team consisting of the student’s teacher(s), counselor, psychologist, administrative leader, and others who know the student well. SAEBRS and mySAEBRS must be compared with other sources of information about the student’s behaviors in order to confirm the presence of risk and need for support.

mySAEBRS Benchmarks for High Risk, Some Risk, and Low Risk