ACT Tessera

General Information on the Measure
Purpose of the measure

The ACT Tessera Social and Emotional Learning Assessment System was developed to measure social and emotional skills that are associated with success in school, career, and life. The system can be used by educators to select, develop, and implement programs or interventions to improve these skills in children and adolescents.

Main constructs measured

Intrapersonal competencies; Interpersonal competencies

Applicable grade levels

Grades 6-12

Publication year for the most recent version

2018

Year originally developed

2016

Related measures
Measure Administration
Respondent

Student

Method of administration

Digital

Number of items

93

Item format

Likert-type rating scales; situational judgment items; forced-choice items

Administration time

No information is available in the references reviewed.

Available languages

English, Japanese, and Spanish

Fee for use Fee charged by developer
Credentials required for administration

None

Scoring
Overall score reporting

No overall scores are reported.

Subscore reporting

There are five subscores:

  • Grit/Responsibility
  • Teamwork/Cooperation
  • Composure/Resilience
  • Curiosity/Ingenuity
  • Leadership/Communication Style
Scoring procedures

A scoring report is provided by ACT.

Interpretive information

Score reports classify scores as "developing," "approaching," "demonstrating," and “mastering,” along with example behaviors that are associated with each level for each subscore.

Evidence of Technical Quality
Populations for which technical quality evidence has been collected

Middle school and high school students in the United States.

Reliability evidence

MS: Self-report ranged from 0.67 to 0.75; SJT ranged from 0.68 to 0.84; traditional reliability metrics do not apply to FC (ACT, 2018).

For middle school, internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha) estimates range from 0.67 to 0.75 for the self-report forms, and 0.68-0.84 for the situational judgment items (ACT, 2018).

For high school, internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha) estimates ranged from 0.72 to 0.78 for self-report forms, and 0.63 to 0.86 for the situational judgment items (ACT, 2018).

Validity evidence
Evidence based on content
Items were reviewed and mapped to domains by a panel of independent raters (N=5) who were psychology doctoral students or held a Ph.D. in psychology. Raters showed strong agreement in their mapping (greater than or equal to 0.95 agreement as measured by intraclass correlation coefficients) (ACT, 2018).
Evidence based on response processes
No information is available in the references reviewed.
Evidence based on internal structure
Confirmatory factor analysis was used to find support for the intended domains on the self-report form. Results were interpreted to suggest six factors corresponding to the Tessera constructs. For the forced choice items, a multidimensional IRT model was used to find support for six distinct factors. Factor models did not fit for the situational judgment items (ACT, 2018).
Evidence based on relations with other variables
Composite scores based on forced choice, situational judgment, and self-report items for all domains correlated with GPA in both middle school and high school (ACT, 2018).
Locating the Measure
Obtaining a copy of the measure act.org/tessera
References

"ACT Tessera Technical Bulletin," ACT, ACT, Inc. 2018.

Notes

This measure is also reviewed in the AWG Guide.

Measure summary updated October 31, 2018.