The Living SEB Project: A Living Database for Review and Meta-Analysis of Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Skills

The social, emotional, and behavioral (SEB) skills framework was recently proposed as an integrative model for soft skills/socio-emotional competencies, clarifying their definition and distinction from personality traits. To support open and cumulative research in this area, we introduce the Living SEB Project, a continuously updated database combining ongoing literature searches, an open repository of coded studies and effect sizes, and an interactive application enabling customizable meta-analyses. At the time of writing, we identified 259 publications, with 28 meeting criteria for the living review and 17 (24 samples) for quantitative synthesis. Two tutorial analyses are used to demonstrate the database’s utility: a meta-analysis of SEB–academic achievement links and a meta-analytic structural equation model testing SEB skills’ incremental validity beyond personality traits. The Living SEB Project sets out as a transparent, dynamic and openly accessible tool to accelerate and ease cumulative science and synthesis within the SEB skills framework and beyond.