Introduction

Due to the worldwide COVID-19 health contingency, school activities in Mexico were suspended, as a result of which students of all educational levels began to carry out their learning activities at home.

Objective

Adapt a Socioemotional Skills (SES) Survey to the context of COVID-19 and undertake a diagnosis of the emotional state, stress, and learning experiences of Mexican junior and senior high school students.

Method

A test battery was administered to 205 students from nine states in the country from schools where Enseña por México collaborates, and an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted for the SES survey. In addition, a Pearson’s correlation was calculated between SES and stress levels.

Results

The EFA yielded four components that explain 51.71% of the sample variance. In addition, statistically significant negative correlations were found between SES and stress in the health field (r = -.316, p <.01) and SES and school stress (r = -.606, p <.01).

Discussion and conclusion

The results showed that a high level of socio-emotional skills is related to a lower level of stress in students