Survey data of social, emotional, and behavioral skills among seven independent samples

The data presented in this article— originally reported by Soto and colleagues (Soto et al., in press)— assess social, emotional, and behavioral (SEB) skills, indexed by the Behavioral, Emotional, and Social Skills Inventory (BESSI), across seven independent samples (N = 6,309). Four of the datasets (N = 5000) were collected using an online survey housed on PersonalityLab.org. In two of these internet datasets, participants provided their responses to sociodemographic items, subsets of BESSI items (45 – 102 items), and the Big Five Inventory-2 (BFI-2, 60 items). In the other two internet datasets, participants answered the same sociodemographic items and the full BESSI questionnaire (192 - 200 items). The fifth dataset was collected via an online survey sponsored by the Character Lab Research Network and included responses from 499 high school students. The High School Student Sample completed sociodemographic items, the full BESSI (192 items), and measures of academic engagement, occupational interests, peer acceptance, friendship quality, romantic relationship satisfaction, family relationship satisfaction, volunteerism, physical exercise, and life satisfaction (96 total items). The sixth dataset was collected using the Qualtrics Online Sample service, and 488 adult respondents completed an extended, observer-report version of the BESSI (284 items), sociodemographic items, and information regarding their relationship with the person whom they were reporting on (7 items). The seventh data set consisted of college students (N = 322) from Colby College. The College Student Sample completed a survey on Qualtrics that included sociodemographic items, the full BESSI (192 items), the BFI-2 (60 items), and four other SEB skill inventories (116 items). All datasets, questionnaires, and scoring forms are hosted on OSF. The data can be used to (1) understand the structure and organization of SEB skills, (2) model the relationship between SEB skills and conceptually adjacent constructs such as personality traits and character strengths, and (3) explore the associations between SEB skills and consequential outcomes.