Despite widespread enthusiasm for remedial education programming with refugee populations, there is little rigorous evidence on how to design and implement such programs. We employ a cluster-randomized design of non-equivalent treatment groups to test the impact of access to two types of program enhancement: longer program duration and the addition of skilltargeted social and emotional learning (SEL) activities for Syrian refugees enrolled in Lebanese public schools. We find that, compared to 10 weeks of programming, 26 weeks marginally increases students’ literacy skills (ES = 0.04) and significantly improves behavioral regulation (ES = 0.31), but students reported less positive perceptions of their public school environment (ES= −0.83 to −0.89) and remedial tutoring site (ES= −0.15 to −0.24). We also find that the addition of skill-targeted SEL activities to 26 weeks of programming results in higher student reports of school-related stress compared to programming without skill-targeted activities (ES = 0.21). Implications for program and policy are discussed.

In humanitarian settings, social-emotional learning (SEL) programs for children are often delivered using a field-feasible approach where the programs are more easily deployable and adaptable in the field, require minimal training, and depend less on the strict sequence and structure of the program components to elicit the intended treatment effect. However, evidence is lacking on what aspects of this implementation approach enable the SEL programming to be more beneficial to children’s SEL development.

The original Response to Stress Questionnaire (RSQ: Connor-Smith et al., 2000) was designed to capture the ways that individuals react to and cope with specific sources of stress, including parental depression, family conflict, and academic stressors. In order to assess local and refugee children’s stress experiences and stress responses in Nigerien public school settings, researchers adapted the child self-report version of the RSQ-Academic Problems (RSQ-AP). It includes two subscales intended to assess: (a) academic problems stress and (b) involuntary engagement response to stress.

The Self-Regulation Assessment-Assessor Report (SRA-AR) is a measurement tool used to capture assessors’ perceptions of of Nigerian refugee and Nigerien children’s skills at regulating their behavior during an assessment. The SRA-AR was developed based on the Preschool Self-Regulation Assessment-Assessor Report (PSRA-AR) (Smith-Donald et al., 2007). The developers tested this measurement tool in Niger.

Rigorous evaluation of social and emotional learning programs requires the use of measures that provide reliable and valid information on the meaningful differences in children’s social emotional skills across treatment and control groups, as well as changes over time. In contexts affected by conflict and crisis, few measures can provide the evidence required to support their use in program evaluations, which limits stakeholders’ ability to determine whether a program is working, how well it is working, and for whom.

The original Response to Stress Questionnaire (RSQ: Connor-Smith et al., 2000) was designed to capture the ways that individuals react to and cope with specific sources of stress, including parental depression, family conflict, and academic stressors. In order to assess refugee children’s stress experiences and stress responses in Lebanese public school settings, researchers adapted the child self-report version of the RSQ-Academic Problems (RSQ-AP). It includes two subscales intended to assess: (a) academic problems stress and (b) involuntary engagement response to stress.

The Self-Regulation Assessment-Assessor Report (SRA-AR) is a measurement tool used to capture assessors’ perceptions of children’s skills at regulating their behavior during an assessment. The SRA-AR was developed based on the Preschool Self-Regulation Assessment-Assessor Report (PSRA-AR) (Smith-Donald et al., 2007). The developers tested this measurement tool in Lebanon.

The Child-Friendly School Questionnaire for Syrian Children in Lebanon (CFSQ-SL) is a self-report survey that was used to capture primary-school aged Syrian refugee students’ perceptions of the climate of Lebanese public schools. CFSQ-SL was adapted and shortened from the original CFSQ developed by UNICEF.

Demonstrating that social-emotional learning (SEL) programs lead to improvements in children’s social-emotional skills requires the use of measures that provide accurate data capturing meaningful changes in children’s development over time. In contexts affected by crisis and conflict, few measures have the evidence required to support their use in program evaluations, limiting stakeholders’ ability to determine whether programs are working, how, and for whom. The Social Emotional Response and Information Scenarios (SERAIS) holds promise for addressing this gap. SERAIS (“I would” in French) employs a scenario-based format in which children are asked to report what they would do and feel in a variety of different social situations.