Assessing social intelligence: the self-report version of the Peer-Estimated Social Intelligence Questionnaire (PESI)

Kaukiainen and collaborators (1998) developed the Peer-Estimated Social Intelligence Questionnaire (PESI) as a peer-reported instrument in order to simultaneously assess the perceptual, cognitive-analytical and behavioral components of children’s and adolescents’ social intelligence. The present study aimed to investigate psychometric properties of the self-report version of PESI within a sample of preadolescents. At T1, 529 middle school students (M age = 12 years and 7 months) took part in the study; 175 students were retested after 18 months (T2). PESI factor structure was explored using both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, and a mono-factorial structure emerged (9 items simultaneously tapping main aspects of social intelligence: person perception, social flexibility, accomplishment of one’s own social goals, behavioral outcomes). Invariance by gender, internal consistency, and test-retest analyses were also examined. Finally, correlation analyses parted by gender between PESI and self-report indicators of emotional functioning (i.e., emotional intelligence and empathy) at both T1 and T2 revealed that PESI is a valid questionnaire that can be used when it is appropriate to investigate students’ perception about own social abilities.