Assessing Aspects of Social Relationships in Youth Across Middle Childhood and Adolescence: The NIH Toolbox Pediatric Social Relationship Scales

Abstract

Objective: Social relationships are a critical context for children's socioemotional development and their quality is closely linked with concurrent and future physical and emotional wellbeing. However, brief self-report measures of social relationship quality that translate across middle childhood, adolescence, and adulthood are lacking, limiting the ability to assess the impact of social relationships on health outcomes over time. To address this gap, this article describes the development and testing of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Toolbox Pediatric Social Relationship Scales, which were developed in parallel with the previously-reported Adult Social Relationship Scales.

Methods: Item sets were selected from the NIH Toolbox adult self-report item banks in the domains of social support, companionship, and social distress, and adapted for use in preadolescent (ages 8-11 years) and adolescent (ages 12-18 years) cohorts. Items were tested across a U.S. community sample of 1,038 youth ages 8-18 years. Classical test and item response theory approaches were used to identify items for inclusion in brief unidimensional scales. Concurrent validity was assessed by comparing resultant scales to established pediatric social relationship instruments.

Results: Internal reliability and concurrent validity were established for five unique scales, with 5-7 items each: Emotional Support, Friendship, Loneliness, Perceived Rejection, and Perceived Hostility.

Conclusions: These brief scales represent developmentally appropriate and valid instruments for assessing the quality of youth social relationships across childhood and adolescence. In conjunction with previously published adult scales, they provide an opportunity for prospective assessment of social relationships across the developmental spectrum.

Keywords: adolescents; measure validation; school-age children; social functioning and peers.