Student wellbeing & Social Emotional Health
SSIS Stress & Resilience Universal Screener
The SSIS Stress and Resilience Assessments (SaRA) are for identifying children and youths’ stress response levels and documenting their social skills needed to manage stress, seek support from others, and become resilient students. Our easy-to-administer universal screeners offers measures appropriate for grades K-12 and gathers insights from students, teachers, and guardians.
The SSIS SaRA Universal Screener is the most researched and validated instrument for measuring
Resilience Behaviors
Healthy Social Skills
Stress Management Skills
Mental Health Indicators
Stress Indicators
Internalizing Emotional Behaviors
Externalizing Emotional Behaviors
The SSIS SaRA (2024) is an updated screening edition of the original multi-informant SSIS Rating Scale (Gresham & Elliott, 2008), which has been used to assess children’s social skills and mental health concerns in over 7,000 published studies.
KEY FEATURES
Multi-Perspective
Includes assessment forms for student, teacher, and/or guardian.
Efficient
35-40 items total, 7-8 minutes per participant to complete.
Student Resiliency Score
Evaluate student resilience, examining both their overall capacity and their specific strengths and areas of improvement in key skills.
Research Backed
13 peer reviewed research studies with these brief assessments with samples of students in the US and 8 EU countries.
Comprehensive & Longitudinal Reports
Includes reports for student, teacher, and guardian forms at classroom, school, district, grade level, and more.
Training & Project Manager Included
Oversees assessment administration setup and reports training overview.
Accessible
Assessment are available in both Spanish and English with read aloud and accessiblity menu.
Easy to Share Student Reports
Share student detail and school reports with your team and stakeholders.
Developmentally Appropriate
Appropriate for students to self-report grades 3-12 and teachers assistend reporting grades K-2.
Tier 1 & Tier 2 Interventions Available
Tier 1 Classroom Intervention Program (CIP) & Tier 2 Small Group Intervention (CIP-T2).
SSIS SaRA FRAMEWORK
The goal for all students it to optimize the number and use of their Social Skills and Stress Management Skills so as to prevent or counteract high levels of stress and reduce maladaptive behaviors that interfere with health, well-being, and relationships.
This framework is based on decades of research synthesized by the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard (2017; 2021) and efficacy research with the SSIS SEL Classwide Intervention Program (2020).
SSIS SaRA MODEL
The goal for all students it to optimize the number and use of their Social Skills and Stress Management Skills so as to prevent or counteract high levels of stress and reduce maladaptive behaviors that interfere with health, well-being, and relationships.
Resilience Behaviors
SOCIAL SKILLS
Self-Awareness
Accurate recognition of one's emotions and thoughts and their influence on behavior, including accuracy in the assessment of skills and a sense of confidence and optimism.Self-Control
Effective regulation of one's emotions, thoughts, and behaviors in different situations, including stress management, impulse control, self-motivation, and goal setting.Social Awareness & Support
Taking the perspective of and empathizing with others who need assistance and being able to ask for support for oneself from others.Relationship Skills
Establishing and maintaining healthy and rewarding relationships with diverse individuals and groups, including clear communication, active listening, cooperation, resisting peer pressure, conflict negotiation, and seeking/offering help when appropriate.Responsible Decisions & Conflict Resolutions
Making constructive choices about personal and social interactions that are based on safety, fairness, respect for others, and healthy consequences.
STRESS MANAGEMENT SKILLS
Stress Management Skills
Each student has a capacity for resilience based on their stress management behaviors and social skills that facilitate supportive relationships and successful engagement with others at school.
Mental Health Indicators
STRESS INDICATORS
Stress Indicators
Stress is a state of mental or emotional tension resulting from challenging or fearful situations. Some key signs of stress in children and adolescents are feeling angry, irritated, nervous, worried, tense, and tired.
EMOTIONAL BEHAVIORS
Internalizing Emotional Behavior
Negative emotions and behaviors directed inwardly involving feeling anxious, sad, or lonely; exhibiting poor self- esteem; lack of interest or limited engagement with others.Externalizing Emotional Behavior
Negative emotions and behavior directed primarily toward others involving verbal or physical aggression; poor control of temper; arguing; actively excluding others.
Why measure stress and why now?
In Part 1 of the interview, Stephen Elliott, PhD introduces the latest updates to the most researched and validated social skills and mental health universal screener for the K-12 market, now called the SSIS™ SaRA.
Stephen Elliott explores why students’ mental health concerns are magnified with stress identified as a missing link. Concern regarding students’ mental health and academic engagement has peaked over the past 5 years. An ever increasing population of children have been reported with higher levels of emotional behavior and stress concerns, while struggling to effectively cope with these concerns.
What are the new items related to stress?
In Part 2 of the interview, Stephen Elliott, PhD talkes about the items on the the SSIS™ Stress and Resilience Assessments (SSIS SaRA) universal screener, with specific attention on the new items related stress.
With the new assessment, Stephen Elliott and colaborators have introduced 5 new questions about Stress Indicators for the students, teacher and parent/guardian raters, and the 5 new questions about Stress Management Skills for student self-rating only.
Part 3 Coming Soon
ASSESSMENT OPTIONS
ssis universal screening options
The SSIS SaRA is designed to screen and monitor students' capacity to be resilient and identify protective social skills needed to improve their resiliency. The assessment is brief and easy to use, and provides actionable results that can be used to guide interventions.
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20 Social Skills items
10 Emotional Behavioral Health Items
10 Stress Items: 5 Stress Indicators and 5 Stress Management Items.
Takes 7-8 minutes to complete.
Used for Universal Screening of student well-being, Program Evaluation, student support and intervention palnning.
REPORTING & DATA EXTRACTS
The SSIS reporting suite offers 11 reports for school and district teams to monitor current status and progress over time at individual, teacher, school, grade, and district levels.
The key report is the SSIS Student Detail report, which shows current and historical data for each student and is often shared with families and during intervention planning.
The scored data extract files allow you to easily export the scored data to your SIS, MTSS, RtI or district data warehouse with ease for integration with your own reporting or whole-child analysis processes.
ADDITIONAL SERVICES
EVIDENCE BASED SEL LEARNING PROGRAMS
ALIGN YOUR SCREENER TO INSTRUCTIONAL & INTERVENTION PROGRAMS
The SSIS Stress and Resilience universal screener is tightly aligned to the SSIS SEH Classwide Intervention Program (CIP) curriculum. SSIS SEH CIP has been recognized by CASEL as one of the few CASEL SELect Programs available for evidence-based social and emotional learning programs.
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The Intervention Program focuses on teaching up to 30 SEL skills representing the competency domains of Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills, and Responsible Decision Making. Each skill unit is comprised of 3 lessons that require 25-30 minutes. Each lesson follows an effective Tell-Show-Do-Practice-Monitor Progress-Generalize format and features engaging PowerPoints, video clips, and downloadable materials to support students’ learning how to apply SEL skills in up to 180 social situations. The Skill Units are ungraded; Units 1-10 are Core and can be used with students ages 5-18, while Units 11-30 are Advanced and can be used with students 10-18. The program meets the S.A.F.E.R. (sequenced, active, focused, explicit, and responsive) criteria for highly-effective instruction and is recognized by CASEL as a SELect program.
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The SSIS Social Emotional Health (SEH) CIP-T2 is a Tier 2 intervention program for improving social emotional health of students who need extra support beyond what they received in a Tier 1 SEL Program. The CIP-T2 builds upon the SSIS SEL Classwide Intervention Program, a CASEL SELect and What Works Clearinghouse recognized Tier 1 Strong Program, and is comprised of two components:
BIGS (Brief Intervention Group Support) focuses on developing group support and teamwork to teach 4 healthy behavior routines (Stress Management, Social Support Empowerment, Positives Behavior Wins, and Personal Improvement Goal Setting).
BIMS (Brief Intervention Modules for Students) focuses on individualized SEL skill interventions using the CIP Skill Units; note other SEL or related social behavior improvement programs could be used in place of the CIP.
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Item description
Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL)
Since 1994, CASEL has worked to research and empower organizations to help develop skills for self-aware, caring, responsible, engaged, and lifelong learners who work together to achieve their goals and create a better world.
RESEARCH
RESEARCHED-BACKED VALID & RELIABLE SEL ASSESSMENTS
SSIS Social Skills + Mental Health assessment is the most researched and validated SEH instruments on the market
Use the SSIS SEL + Mental Health assessment with confidence knowing that you are using the most researched and validated SEL instruments on the market.
You can have confidence that you are making decisions based on the most reliable SEL and Mental Health data available.
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DiPerna, J. C., Lei, P., Bellinger, J. M., & Cheng, W. (2016). Effects of a universal
positive classroom behavior program on student learning. Psychology in the
Schools, 53, 189-203
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Anthony, C.J., Elliott, S.N., DiPerna, J.C., & Lei, P-W. (2020a). The SSIS SEL Brief Scales-Student Form: Initial development and validation. School Psychology, 35(4), 277-283.
Anthony, C.J., Elliott, S.N., DiPerna, J.C., & Lei, P-W. (2020b). Multi-rater assessment of young children's social and emotional learning via the SSIS SEL Brief Scales - Preschool Forms. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 53, 625-637.
Anthony, C.J., Elliott, S.N., DiPerna, J.C., & Lei, P-W. (2020c). Initial development and validation of the SSIS SEL Brief Scales - Teacher Form. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment.
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Crandall Hart, S., DiPerna, J.C., Husmann, K., Zhao, H. & Lei, P.W. (2023). Social
Validity and Cultural Relevance of the SSIS SEL Classwide Intervention
Program in Context: Insights From First- and Second-Grade Teachers, School
Psychology Review, DOI: 10.1080/2372966X.2023.2243239
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Anthony, CJ., Elliot, S.N., DiPerna, J.C., P.W.(2023).To be fair: Development and illustration of the Comprehensive Appraisal of Fairness Evidence (CAFE) model to advance SEL assessment practices. Journal of Social and Emotional Learning: Research, policy, and practice.
DOWNLOAD THE RESEARCH BRIEFS
Research on the Effectiveness of the SSIS SEL Classwide Intervention Program
2015-2023
SSIS SEL Family of Universal Screening Assessments: National & International Research on Technical Qualities & Utility
2020-2024