Usability of Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Assessments in Schools: A Systematic Review From 2009 to 2019

To fully execute multitiered systems of support (MTSS), schools must have access to screening and progress monitoring measures that are defensible and appropriate for intended use yet also must be usable within the intended context. Usability is the extent to which a measure, process, or system is acceptable and can be feasibly used by stakeholders to achieve intended goals. The current study systematically reviewed the prevalence of usability research for school-based screening and progress monitoring of social, emotional, and behavioral (SEB) domains. Results found a lack of studies specifically evaluating features of usability; most articles focused on results related to appropriateness for intended use and technical adequacy. For articles that did evaluate usability, the majority examined teacher perception of feasibility and acceptability. Further, the majority of measures provided some explication of support for tiered problem solving (e.g., assessing SEB functioning at the population level, monitoring student response to targeted/intensive intervention) and did not provide an explicit link between screening and progress monitoring measures. Overall, results highlight a need for greater emphasis on research evaluating the usability of SEB measures for use within an MTSS system.