Development and Measurement Invariance Test of the Chinese Social-Emotional Climate Scale from the Social-Relational Perspective

Abstract Background Social-emotional climate refers to individuals' perceptions of the emotional environment within a collective and profoundly shapes emotional experience, interpersonal interaction, and social behavior. However, most existing scales were developed in Western cultural contexts and cannot adapt to the paradigm of indigenous Chinese social psychology. Against this backdrop, this study, grounded in de Rivera's two-dimensional emotional climate framework and adopting the social-relational perspective, developed the Chinese Social-Emotional Climate Scale using the semantic differential scale paradigm and conducted measurement invariance tests. Methods This study adopted a convenience sampling method and collected data via online and offline questionnaires. A total of 500 participants were recruited, with 250 allocated for item analysis and exploratory factor analysis and 250 for confirmatory factor analysis, to examine the scale's factorial structure, reliability, and validity. Measurement invariance was subsequently tested across gender, age, and educational level. Results Exploratory factor analysis yielded three factors—"Relation to others," "Relation to ideals," and "Relation to groups"—explaining 78.60% of the variance, with factor loadings of 0.743–0.861 in the confirmatory three-factor model. Fit indices were satisfactory ( χ ²/ df = 1.418; NFI = 0.976; RFI = 0.964; IFI = 0.993; TLI = 0.989; CFI = 0.993; RMSEA = 0.041). Cronbach's α coefficients of the three dimensions ranged from 0.61 to 0.90, indicating good internal consistency, and measurement invariance was supported across gender, age, and educational level. Conclusions Grounded in the social-relational perspective, this study developed a localized Chinese Social-Emotional Climate Scale with three dimensions—"Relation to others," "Relation to ideals," and "Relation to groups"—demonstrating good reliability, validity, and measurement invariance. Moving beyond emotional content and valence classifications, the scale establishes a three-dimensional structure of Chinese social-emotional climate from a social-relational perspective, offering a new path for measuring emotional climate and enriching the cross-cultural explanatory power of this concept. It provides a useful tool for future research on social mentality.