About the Measure
| Domains | Mental health and wellbeing, Social and Emotional Competence |
| Key stages | Key Stage 1, Key Stage 2, Key Stage 3, Key Stage 4, Key Stage 5 |
| Subscales | Appropriate social skills; Inappropriate assertiveness; Impulsive; Overconfident; Jealousy/Withdrawal |
| Description | This is a rating scale that assesses social behaviour in children, having broad applicability for early identification of social excesses and deficits and as a dependent variable in treatment-outcome research. |
| Example | I look at people when I talk to them |
| Link | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0005796783900013 |
| Psychometry | |
| Implementation |
Implementation details
| No. of items | 62 |
| Format | Likert |
| Respondent | Multiple |
| Scoring | Standardised |
| Time | 0 |
| Age | 4-18 |
| Cost single purchase | Free - Available |
| Cost per child | Free - Available |
Psychometric details
| UK norms | No |
| Cronbach's α | .84-.93 |
| Test retest | Over 2 weeks: r= .50 for self-report and r=.55 for teacher version |
| Inter-rater reliability | Not reported |
| EFA | 4-factor orthogo |
| CFA | Not reported |
| Criterion validity | Not reported |
| Construct validity | Not reported |
| Concurrent validity | Matson Evaluation of Social Skills with Youngsters (MESSY) is significantly correlated with a number of other measures of social skills, r = [.23,.30] (Matson et al., 1983); Multiple evidence of convergent validity was found between the parent/teacher form and the Behavior Assessment System for Children, Second Edition (BASC-2) subscales and the Autism Spectrum Disorders- Comorbidity for Children (ASD-CC) subscale (Matson et al., 2010) |
| Predictive validity | Not reported |
| Responsiveness | Not reported |
| Floor/Ceiling | Not reported |
| References | Matson, J.L., Rotatori, A.F., Helsel, W.J. (1983). Development of a rating scale to measure social skills in children: The Matson Evaluation of Social Skills with Youngsters (MESSY). Behaviour Research and Therapy, 21(4), 335-340. doi:10.1016/0005-7967(83)90001-3 Matson et al. (2010). Reliability and the validity of the Matson Evaluation of Social Skills with Youngsters. Behavior Modification, 34(6), 539-558. doi:10.1177/0145445510384844 |