(PS9-56) Assessing for Measurement Invariance of a Novel Strengths-based Assessment to Analyze U.S. and Korean Students’ Self-reported CBT Skills to Promote Resilience

Abstract Text: Adopting a strengths-based assessment approach in school settings has been shown to reduce feelings of stigma associated with youth mental health problems (Moore et al., 2023). This focus enables them to leverage their assets to improve weaknesses instead of highlighting failures (Moore et al., 2023). The Social-Emotional Evidence-based Developmental Strengths Assessment (SEEDS; Ebesutani, 2019) is a novel strengths-based youth-report questionnaire designed to screen and track social-emotional competencies. It assesses the use of various practice elements (e.g., exposure, relaxation) to evaluate the implementation of evidence-based strategies for anxiety and depression, ultimately aiming to enhance CBT outcomes.

Although the SEEDS factor analytic findings with U.S. and Korean samples have shown reliability and validity in peer-reviewed published research (Ebesutani, 2019; Matsui & Nakamura, 2022), examining the degree to which construct validity will hold across U.S. and Korean youth is an important next step in measurement refinement and a necessary precursor before investigating any differences in mean scores. The current study will examine measurement invariance between Korean-speaking fourth through sixth graders from Korea (N = 460) and an ethnically diverse (e.g., 60.6% multi-ethnic, 16% Asian, 3.8% Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander) English-speaking fourth through sixth-grade youth sample from Hawaii (N = 504). Preliminary analysis of demographic data for youth participants thus far indicates 29% fourth graders, 23% fifth graders, 48% sixth graders, and 50.2% male (n = 231) for the Korean-speaking sample. Participants from Hawaii included 47% fourth graders, 32% fifth graders, 21% sixth graders, and 51% male (n = 257).

There are two aims to the current study. First, I will utilize the alignment optimization method to examine whether the U.S. and Korean students responded conceptually similarly to the SEEDS scales and subscales. For my second aim, I will compare latent means between U.S. and Korean SEEDS scores. I predict that there will be significant latent mean differences between the U.S. and Korean samples on how they answered the SEEDS 13 subscales, with U.S. students endorsing more social-emotional strengths (i.e., higher SEEDS scores) than Korean students across the 13 practice skills due to U.S. youth being more willing to accept credit and engage in self-praise (i.e., rating themselves higher on the SEEDS items) as compared to Korean students who may have more of a norm of avoidance of self-praise (Kim, 2014; Park et al., 2015). Implications and future research areas, such as cross-cultural considerations in strength-based distillation and cognitive behavioral therapy implementation, will be discussed.