Datasets for the development and validation of the Brief Examination of Social Abilities (BE-Social)

The datasets included in this repository were collected as part of the development and validation of the Brief Examination of Social Abilities (BE-Social), a brief screening test designed to assess social cognition.

The BE-Social evaluates multiple socio-cognitive processes, including social perception, Theory of Mind (ToM), empathy, and the understanding of moral and social rules, through seven tasks administered in approximately 15 minutes.

The repository contains datasets from healthy controls and clinical participants used to examine the psychometric properties of the instrument, including standardization, test–retest reliability, and convergent and divergent validity with other cognitive and socio-cognitive measures. The normative dataset was used to compute regression-based score adjustments and equivalent scores (ES).

Due to ethical and privacy restrictions datasets may be made available for research purposes upon reasonable request. Researchers interested in accessing the data for scientific purposes may request access through Zenodo or by contacting the corresponding author (Maria Franca, maria.franca1196@gmail.com).

The repository contains the following datasets:

- dataset_hc.xlsx  
Normative sample of healthy control participants used for the standardization of the BE-Social, including regression-based score adjustment and the calculation of ES.

- dataset_pz.xlsx  
  Clinical sample used to evaluate the ability of the BE-Social to discriminate between healthy individuals and patients with neurological conditions.

- dataset_test_retest.xlsx  
  Subsample used to assess the test–retest reliability of the BE-Social.

- dataset_validity_hc.xlsx  
  Dataset used to examine convergent and divergent validity with other cognitive and socio-cognitive measures.

Each dataset includes an additional sheet containing the legend and description of all variables.

The materials required to administer the BE-Social (manual, protocol, stimuli, and scoring sheet) are freely available on the Open Science Framework (OSF) https://osf.io/2w5hn/.

If you use these datasets in your research, please cite the article describing the development and validation of the Brief Examination of Social Abilities (BE-Social). Full citation details will be updated once the article is published.