The Development of a Social Skills Scale for Adolescents

Abstract

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The main purpose of the study was to develop an indigenous tool to find out the level and nature of social skills in adolescents. Initially, a pool of 32 items was generated after interviewing 20 participants (both girls and boys). It was reduced later to 25 items excluding repetitions. These 25 items about social skills were administered on 20 new participants as a self-report measure on a 4-point rating scale. Moreover, one item considered ambiguous by participants was dropped and a final list of 24 items was given to 300 girls (50%) and boys (50%; M= 14.9 & SD= 1.07) along with Demographic Proforma and School Children Problem Scale (Saleem & Mahmood, 2011). The sample for the study was selected from government schools using stratified random sampling technique. Exploratory factor analysis revealed three factor solutions which were labelled according to their emerging themes like Getting Along Skills, Social Attributes and the Friendship Skills. The inter scale correlation ranged between (r=.66-.86) and alpha co-efficient showed high reliability (α .80). The tool can be used by school psychologists in assessing and training children with social skills deficits.