Pediatric Evaluation of Emotions, Relationships and Socialisation (PEERS)

Project status: Complete

Research area: Clinical Sciences > Brain and Mind > Digital Health

Our research led to the development of PEERS – a new and engaging assessment tool to evaluate social skills in children and young people.

The Pediatric Evaluation of Emotions, Relationships and Socialisation (PEERS) is a new psychological assessment tool that evaluates social skills in children and young people. The PEERS tool addresses a substantial unmet need, leading the field internationally as the first comprehensive social assessment tool.

Overview

A lack of comprehensive, well-validated tools to detect social impairment limited our ability to identify children and young people in need of intervention. The PEERS tool directly addresses this worldwide unmet need as the first comprehensive social assessment tool in the field.

PEERS is an individually administered computerised iPad application that includes three cognitive subscales (attention-executive, social cognition, communication) which contribute to social function. These subscales are organised into two levels: basic and complex.

The tool utilises fun social stimuli to keep children and young people engaged, such as videos, audio clips and photos of real-life social scenarios. Our team have assessed over 500 children and found PEERS is a reliable and valid social assessment tool.

PEERS – A revolutionary new way to assess and diagnose social skills

PEERS-Q

Along with the PEERS social cognitive assessment, our team have developed PEERS-Q, a parent report questionnaire that assesses the social competency of children and young people aged five to 15 years old (see PEERS-Q tab for more information).

See our Publications tab to read about our recent studies using PEERS and PEERS-Q

Research team

Role	Team member
Lead Researcher	Professor Vicki Anderson
Lead Researcher	Associate Professor Miriam Beauchamp University of Montreal (Canada)
Project members	Simone Darling Stephen Hearps Amy Brown George Charalambous and Curve team

Role

Team member

Lead Researcher

Professor Vicki Anderson

Lead Researcher

Associate Professor Miriam Beauchamp
University of Montreal (Canada)

Project members

Simone Darling

Stephen Hearps

Amy Brown

George Charalambous and Curve team

Pediatric Evaluation of Emotions, Relationships and Socialization-Questionnaire (PEERS-Q)

PEERS-Q (a questionnaire completed by parents, teachers and children > 12 years) provides information regarding: 1) mediators of social function–developmental stage, brain integrity, personal attributes and environment; and 2) social outcomes–social adjustment, competence, participation.

Initial piloting involved: 1) compilation of items with face validity for tapping social skills; 2) focus groups with health professionals; 3) completion of parent ratings across the target age range; 4) categorization of items into ‘subscales’ (Table 1). PEERS-Q has demonstrated good reliability and validity (Hearps et al., 2021).

Table 1. PEERS-Q Subscales

Subscale	Description
Relationships	The quality of the peer interactions and relationships with peers, and their capacity to relate in a prosocial way.
Participation	The level of active participation in social activities, or willingness to engage in activities that require social interaction and involvement with peers.
Social Behaviour	The different overt behaviours that are displayed that may affect social interactions with peers.
Social Rules	The level of understanding of social rules and norms, and the ability to comply with these unspoken rules of appropriate and pro-social communication and interaction.
Social Cognition	The capacity to competently understand and act on social cues, and to reflect on the impact of one’s own behaviour and actions on others in a social context.
Social Communication	The capacity to communicate and interact with others appropriately, and to understand others’ messages in a social context.