Authors: Radiah Smith-Donald, C. Cybele Raver, Tiffany Hayes, and Breeze Richardson
The Preschool Self-Regulation Assessment (PSRA) was adapted from a series of laboratory based tasks for use in field contexts, such as preschool. PSRA offers a "portable" direct assessment of young children's self regulation and is designed to assess self-regulation in emotional, attentional, and behavioral domains by using a brief, structured battery of tasks.
Dr. Raver and her colleagues developed and standardized the PSRA assessor report, capturing children's emotion regulation and attention/impulsivity during the course of the direct assessment. The PSRA assessor report draws from previous work on assessors' global readings of children's regulation (Roid & Miller, 1997; Wakschlag et al., 2005). For more details, see Smith-Donald et al., 2007.
The PSRA has been used in numerous studies, including the Chicago School Readiness Project. Shortened versions have been included in the Foundations of Learning (Morris, P.I. & Raver Co I).
Other articles that have cited the PSRA include:
- Rimm-Kaufman, S. E., Curby, T. W., Grimm, K. J., Nathanson, L., Brock, L. L. (2009). The contribution of children's self-regulation and classroom quality to children's adaptive behaviors in the kindergarten classroom. Developmental Psychology, 45(4).
- Bierman, K.L., Domitrovich, C. E., Nix, R. L., Gest, S. D., Welsh, J. A., Greenberg, M. T., et al. (2008). Promoting academic and social-emotional school readiness: The Head Start REDI program. Child Development. 79(6).
Complete the following form to receive immediate, free access to the PSRA Toolkit
Dr. Cybele Raver grants anyone who completes the form permission to use the PSRA for research purposes and/or translate the PSRA to another language. Written requests to use or translate the PSRA are not necessary.
PSRA toolkit includes:
Measure
- PSRA Script
- PSRA Script in Spanish
Scoresheet
- PSRA Assessor Report
- PSRA Certification Score Sheet
- PSRA Codesheet
- PSRA Spanish Codesheet
Training Materials
- PSRA Training Overview
- Sample PSRA Training Agenda
- PSRA Troubleshooting Tips Short Version
- Materials List
The PSRA Assessor Report
The PSRA Assessor Report, a measure developed by Dr. Raver and her colleagues, is designed to capture assessors' ratings of children's emotion regulation and attention/impulsivity during the course of the PSRA administration. The two PSRA Assessor Report subscales were found to be internally consistent in Raver's CSRP study sample:
| Head Start Fall | Head Start Spring |
| Attention/Impulse Control—Long α = .931 | Attention/Impulse Control—Long α = .923 |
| Attention/Impulse Control—Short α = .933 | Attention/Impulse Control—Short α = .926 |
| Positive Emotion—Long α = .869 |
Positive Emotion—Long α = .822 |
| Positive Emotion—Short α = .871 | Positive Emotion—Short α = .842 |
If you have any questions regarding the PSRA Assessor Report or the above table and wish to receive more information, please complete the form to download the PSRA toolkit which contains detailed information on the measure. Dr. Raver grants complete permission for anyone to utilize or translate the PSRA into another language for research purposes.
The Preschool Self-Regulation Assessment was supported by Award Number R01HD046160 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development or the National Institutes of Health.