Diversity in School-Based Universal Social and Emotional Learning Program Evaluations

This study took an alternative approach to a body of school-based universal SEL interventions and analyzed evaluations for their discussion and treatment of student diversity characteristics, thus adding nuance to the “what works” discussion. Student diversity was defined using five characteristics: gender, race/ethnicity, SES, disability status, and sexual orientation. The purpose was to understand how student diversity is addressed in school-based intervention evaluations, specifically how and when demographic characteristics are reported, how these characteristics are analyzed as moderators of program outcomes, and how subgroup differences based on diversity are incorporated into the overall reported intervention generalizability. The articles were quantitatively and qualitatively coded, and these data were examined for patterns of demographic characteristic reporting, subgroup analyses and results, and generalizability statements. Results showed that diversity characteristics were inconsistently reported in SEL evaluations. When the moderating effects of diversity characteristics were analyzed, the tests were often not sufficiently supported by previous literature or a hypothesis. When present, explanations of subgroup differences were often limited to previous research findings, and explicit generalizability statements were inconsistently reported. The statistical power findings were mixed, but this test has major limitations to be discussed.