撒哈拉以南非洲地区的社会情感技能：行为和自我报告测量的验证和比较

Socioemotional Skills in Sub-Saharan Africa Validating and Comparing Behavioraland Self-Reported Measures Clara DelavalladeSmita DasLéa RouanetAidan ClerkinChris GonzalezJulian Jamison Africa RegionGender Innovation LabSeptember 2025 Policy Research Working Paper11201 Abstract This paper validates a new set of behavioral measures forsocioemotional skills across three Sub-Saharan Africancountries—Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, and Tanzania—andcompares them to widely used self-reported measures.The behavioral measures demonstrate strong psychomet-ric properties and are significantly associated with keyoutcomes, particularly in employment and income. Rela-tionship management skills emerge as the most consistentpredictors of economic outcomes, especially when measuredbehaviorally. Behavioral measures show weaker associationswith social desirability bias and stronger correlations with economic outcomes, and self-reports are more predictiveof mental health. In two countries, changes in behav-ioral socioemotional skills over time significantly predictlabor market improvements—an effect not observed withself-reports—highlighting their value for program evalua-tion. Correlations between measurement types are modest,with variation often driven more by measurement modalitythan underlying skill differences. These findings suggest thatbehavioral measures can offer more reliable instrumentsfor policy and intervention design in low-income settings. The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about developmentissues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry thenames of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely thoseof the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank andits affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent. Socioemotional Skills in Sub-Saharan Africa:Validating and Comparing Behavioral andSelf-Reported Measures Clara Delavallade, Smita Das, Léa Rouanet, Aidan Clerkin, Chris Gonzalez, Julian Jamison1 JEL classification codes :J24, I31, O15 Keywords :Socioemotional skills, Behavioral measures, Economic empowerment, Labor market,Mental health Context for the study Socioemotional skills (SES; sometimes referred to as soft skills) have demonstrated their promise forimproving outcomes ranging from educational attainment, to employment, to mental health [1]. SESare individuals’ abilities to understand themselves and manage emotions, decisions, and relationshipsto achieve their goals. They are recognized as foundational [2], transferable across occupations [3]and settings (home, school, work, community), and are growing in importance with the rise of artificialintelligence [4] and remote work [5]. While they have long been highlighted in business curricula (i.e.,Masters in Business Administration) in high-income countries, they are increasingly recognized fortheir potential to improve outcomes for small-scale entrepreneurs in low- and middle-incomecountries [6,7]. In contexts like Côte d’Ivoire, where moving toward upper-middle-income country (UMIC) status is acentral objective of the forthcoming 2026–2030 National Development Plan, SES — especially thosetied to perseverance, problem-solving, and personal initiative — are seen as vital components of laborand human capital development, with a strong potential to boost the economic participation of youngwomen. However, the current SES literature does not fully unpack whether some SES are rewarded more orface backlash – especially for women [8,9] – relative to others, whether particular skills arefoundational for the formation of others, which programs effectively improve which skills, and howthe returns to SES may differ with a population’s demographics, aspirations, social norms, andavailable opportunities. Central to this effort is the difficulty of defining, differentiating, andmeasuring these skills. Overlapping and overcrowded definitions make it difficult to compare resultsacross studies and extract policy lessons tied to teaching, hiring, or screening based on these skills.There has been a notable misalignment between the skills that are taught and those which are keyfor labor outcomes. For example, while most evidence on SES training focuses on intrapersonal skills[6,9,10,11,12], several studies have highlighted the growing importance of interpersonal skills[4,5,13]. Here, we adopt the Effective Socio-emotional Skills to Gain Economic Empowerment (ESTEEM)framework of 14 SES to unpack which skills matter for employment and mental health, and weundertake an extensive process to measure these skills in Sub-Saharan Africa.2We use data fromthree randomized c