Social Skills Assessments

Social skills have been defined in many ways. Broadly, social skills are interpersonal responses that allow children to adapt to their environment in order to initiate and sustain interpersonal relationships through verbal and nonverbal modes of communication. There are a number of social skills assessments available for young children that have been widely used to identify individual social deficits, guide decision making in the selection of social skills programs and services, and evaluate intervention or treatment outcomes. Because social skills is a broad term that encompasses several specific skills and behaviors that span various domains of social functioning (e.g., acceptance, communication, engagement, friendship, play, reciprocal interaction, etc.), assessing social skills in young children may be challenging. Many social skills assessments incorporate contextual factors, so that ...