Identifying And Assessing The Job-Related Social Skills Of Adolescents And Young Adults With Emotional And Behavioral Disorders

Abstract

Adolescents and young adults (ages 15 to 25) with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) experience difficulties maintaining competitive employment, in large part because of social skills deficits specific to interacting with work supervisors and co-workers in the employment settings. However, only a few studies have sought to identify the types of social interactions and behaviors exhibited by these persons in competitive work placements. This research first described job-related social behaviors for persons with EBD by following the behavioral analytic model and then used this information to develop measures of these skills. This model consisted of four sequential steps: situational analysis (job-related social interactions were identified through structured interviews of workers with EBD, professionals, and employers), generation of alternatives (possible behavioral responses to the interactions were identified by adolescents and young adults with EBD and peers without EBD), response evaluation (professionals evaluated each response alternative's effectiveness in resolving the specific social interaction), and development of the measures (the content from the previous steps was used as the basis for the measures). Two measures were developed: the Scale of Job-related Social Skill Knowledge (SSSK) and the Scale of Job-related Social Skill Performance (SSSP). The SSSK is a structured individual interview in which social interactions are posed to a person with EBD, who then states what he or she would do if involved in such a situation. These responses are recorded and then scored according to guidelines provided in the response evaluation. The SSSP is a rating scale that is completed on individuals by a third-party judge about each individual's social skill performance in work placements. The measures were field-tested and psychometric analyses conducted. Both the SSSK and the SSSP exhibited more than acceptable item and reliability indices and discriminated between groups of persons with and without EBD.