Pre-K SEL Inclusion Criteria and Screening: Scoping Review

A scoping review lives or dies by what gets in and what gets out. In a field as fragmented as Pre-Kindergarten behavioral and social-emotional learning (SEL) research—where relevant work appears in psychology journals, education databases, and allied health literature—those selection rules carry unusual weight. They determine which frameworks count, which outcomes are visible, and which populations the synthesis can speak to.

Omran’s (2026) scoping review of behavioral modification and SEL frameworks for children aged 3 to 5 was conducted in accordance with the PRISMA extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) protocol described by Tricco and colleagues [1, 2]. This article unpacks the inclusion and exclusion criteria the review applied, the three-stage screening process it used, the role of the standardized data-extraction form, and the current status of the PRISMA-ScR flow diagram—an item the source itself flags as pending until screening concludes.

A note before going further: the review is a preprint whose search and screening phases are explicitly “in progress” [1]. Final inclusion counts, the PRISMA-ScR flow diagram (Figure 1), and the complete data extraction table are flagged for addition before journal submission. This article describes the selection architecture as documented; it does not report figures that the source has not yet released.

Why Selection Rules Matter in a Scoping Review

A scoping review is not a systematic review. Its goal is not to assess the quality of individual studies or compute effect sizes; it is to map the landscape of what exists, document patterns, and surface gaps [1, 2]. Because the deliverable is a map, the boundaries of the map—where the inclusion criteria draw the edges—do most of the methodological work.

For Pre-K behavioral and SEL research, those edges matter twice over. The literature cuts across disciplines, includes interventions of widely varying scope, and has accumulated a tangled body of evaluative work since 2000. Without explicit criteria, the synthesis would either over-collect (becoming unfocused) or under-collect (missing the somatic and sensory regulation literatures that sit outside conventional education databases). Omran’s criteria were designed to keep the review focused on what classroom-deployable Pre-K frameworks actually look like in the published evidence [1].

The Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

Six dimensions defined the boundary of the synthesis: population, study type, publication date, intervention type, outcome, and setting [1]. Each was specified in both directions—what counted, and what did not.

The Six-Dimension Boundary

The table below reproduces the criteria as written in the source manuscript.

Source: Omran (2026), Methods [1].

Why Each Criterion Was Drawn That Way

• Population: 3–5 years, Pre-K settings broadly defined. The review’s question is specific to Pre-Kindergarten developmental conditions, so K-12-only studies were excluded. Including Head Start and licensed daycare alongside formal Pre-K captures the full range of settings where 3- to 5-year-olds actually receive group-based instruction [1]. This matters because a substantial portion of the early SEL implementation literature is conducted in Head Start specifically.
• Study type: peer-reviewed and government reports only. Restricting to peer-reviewed journal articles, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and government research reports keeps the evidence base auditable. The exclusion of unpublished dissertations and conference abstracts is a credibility decision; the author also names this explicitly as a limitation under “gray literature,” noting that some practitioner-developed work is therefore underrepresented in the synthesis [1].
• Publication date: 2000–2024. The window aligns with the modern era of SEL framework development and implementation research. The seminal PATHS publication of Greenberg and colleagues (1995) [3] sits just outside the start date, but its updated empirical literature falls well within it. PBIS, as articulated by Sugai and Horner (2009) [4], Conscious Discipline, as articulated by Bailey (2015) [5], and Second Step in its current curricular form (Committee for Children, 2011) [6] all sit comfortably inside the window.
• Intervention type: named framework only. This is the most distinctive criterion. Studies examining individual teacher practices without a named framework were excluded [1]. The decision deliberately narrows the review to programs that can be identified, attributed, replicated, and compared—the units of analysis a review of “frameworks” requires. It also means that valuable work on idiosyncratic classroom practice falls outside the synthesis by design.
• Outcome: at least one measurable behavioral, social-emotional, or regulatory outcome. The outcome criterion preserves the review’s empirical orientation. A study describing a framework without measuring anything it produced cannot inform the gap analysis; the synthesis is built to support [1].
• Setting: classroom-based implementation. Laboratory studies of, for example, executive function tasks divorced from classroom delivery would not speak to the review’s question about what frameworks can be used in real Pre-K settings [1].

The Three-Stage Screening Process

Once the search returned its record set, screening followed the sequential structure standard to PRISMA-ScR [2]. The architecture is simple in shape, but each stage performs a distinct function.

Stage 1 — Title Screening

In the first pass, all records were scanned by title. Anything clearly unrelated to behavioral modification, SEL, or Pre-Kindergarten populations was removed at this stage [1]. Title screening is necessarily generous on inclusion and aggressive on irrelevance—the goal is to discard the obvious off-topic results without prematurely excluding ambiguous ones.

For a review covering four databases (Google Scholar, ERIC, PsycINFO, and CINAHL) and thirteen search strings, the title-level pool is the broadest the protocol will see [1]. See A10 — Databases and Search Strategy for the upstream search architecture that feeds this stage.

Stage 2 — Abstract Review

In the second stage, abstracts of remaining records were reviewed against the full set of inclusion and exclusion criteria [1]. Abstracts allow rapid assessment of population age, intervention naming, study type, and outcome reporting—the four most decisive criteria at this point in the pipeline.

For Pre-K-specific synthesis, the population check is often the most consequential at the abstract stage. A title may suggest “early childhood SEL,” while the abstract reveals a sample running from age 4 through grade 3, blurring the Pre-K-only boundary. Abstracts make those judgment calls possible without retrieving full texts.

Stage 3 — Full-Text Assessment

In the third stage, full texts of all records that passed abstract screening were retrieved and read in full [1]. Full-text assessment confirms what the abstract suggested and surfaces what the abstract concealed—measurement-instrument choice, sample composition, fidelity of implementation, and whether the named framework was actually the study’s focus or only a peripheral reference.

This sequential title-abstract-full-text architecture is what PRISMA-ScR specifies as standard scoping-review practice [2]. The progressive narrowing concentrates effort where it matters: title screening is fast and broad, full-text reading is slow and exhaustive.

The Standardized Data-Extraction Form

Data were extracted from every study meeting the inclusion criteria using a standardized extraction form [1]. The form is the bridge between screening and synthesis—the instrument by which study-level information is converted into the structured data on which the review’s findings rest.

The source does not enumerate the full field set of the extraction form in this preprint version, indicating that the complete data extraction table will be added to the manuscript before journal submission [1].

What can be inferred from the analytic structure of the review is that the form supports categorization across the six-category framework taxonomy (Universal SEL Curricula; School-Wide Behavioral Systems; Mindfulness-Based Interventions; Executive Function Training; Teacher-Mediated Co-Regulation; Hybrid and Multi-Component Frameworks) and against the four-feature gap analysis (MTSS-tiered architecture; quantifiable classroom rubric; somatic regulation instruction for ages 3–5; substitute-teacher-ready protocols) [1].

Researchers replicating or extending this synthesis should expect the final extraction form to capture, at a minimum, the variables required to populate those two analytic structures: framework name, intervention category, population characteristics, measurement instruments, reported outcomes, and the presence or absence of each of the four structural features.

The PRISMA-ScR Flow Diagram: Current Status

PRISMA-ScR requires a flow diagram reporting record counts at each screening stage—identified, screened, assessed for eligibility, included [2]. Omran’s manuscript states explicitly that Figure 1 is “to be inserted upon completion of the screening phase before journal submission” [1].

This article, therefore, does not report identification, exclusion, or inclusion counts. The source itself describes the search and screening as in progress. Any quantitative summary of the screening yield would have to be invented to appear here, and inventing it would contravene both the source’s own caveats and the integrity standards of scoping-review reporting.

What the source does specify, qualitatively, is that the screening process is identifying a substantial body of relevant literature across the six framework categories [1]. Sample sizes within identified studies range “from a single classroom of 18 children to multi-site surveys involving thousands”—a qualitative descriptor preserved here exactly as the source uses it [1].

For readers tracking the preprint, the items pending the next manuscript version include the final number of included studies, the completed PRISMA-ScR flow diagram, and the precise descriptive statistics for the included literature [1]. See A27 — Limitations and Status for the broader preprint-status discussion.

What the Criteria Reveal About the Review’s Scope

The shape of the inclusion criteria tells you something about what the synthesis is built to answer—and what it cannot.

The “named framework” requirement focuses the review on identifiable programs—CASEL, Second Step, PATHS, Conscious Discipline, PBIS, MindUP, CalmSpace, Tools of the Mind, and the Kindness Curriculum, among them [1]. This is the population of evidence relevant to the review’s three research questions: what frameworks exist, what outcomes and measurement tools have been used, and what gaps a new framework would need to fill [1]. See A8 — Purpose and Research Questions for the question architecture and A6 — The Major SEL and Behavior Frameworks Used Today for the framework inventory, the criteria ultimately yielded.

The exclusion of non-English publications, gray literature, and unpublished dissertations sets explicit limits that the author acknowledges in the Limitations section [1]. The English-only restriction likely omits relevant work from non-English-speaking research contexts; the gray-literature exclusion may underrepresent practitioner-originated frameworks that have not entered the peer-reviewed pipeline. These boundaries are visible by design rather than concealed.

The 2000–2024 window similarly defines the era of evidence the synthesis speaks to—the modern SEL/behavioral-framework period—without claiming coverage of earlier foundational work whose conceptual influence is acknowledged in the introduction rather than re-extracted in the results.