Verbal and Non-Verbal Social Skills of Primary School Students

Abstract

Social skills are a factor that determines an individual's quality of social interactions with their surrounding. A high development level of social skills contributes to self-respect and self-esteem, which has a positive impact on human relations and, consequently, on the possibility of self-affirmation in different areas of life. The results of research that had to examine verbal and non-verbal social skills of primary school students are presented in this research paper. The research sample number was 506 students from six primary schools located in the city of Tuzla. Taking the sex of students as a variable into consideration, there were 225 girls and 281 boys, aged 11- 14. Regarding the research instruments, the Inventory of social skills (Roggio and Throckmorton 1986) was applied, and it comprised two areas: emotional-nonverbal, which reflects non-verbal social skills, and socio-verbal, the sub-scales of which measure verbal social skills. During the data processing, descriptive statistics were utilized, and the obtained indicators lead to a conclusion that primary school students show average results on both verbal and non-verbal domains of the Inventory of social skills. In the context of non-verbal social skills, students had the highest results on the Scale of sensitivity to emotions whereas, in the area of verbal social skills, the students had the highest results on the Scale of social sensitivity. These results enable insight into current conditions regarding the social skills of primary school students and since they are based on students' self-evaluation, they can serve as a basis for further research which should encompass the teachers' and parents' assessment.