Social Skills Rating System

This paper presents a general overview and evaluation of the Social Skills Rating System. The bulk of the information presented in the overviews were obtained from comprehensive discussions of the instrument presented by Benes (1995) and Furlong and Karno (1995) in the Twelfth Mental Measurement Yearbook. The evaluation of the instrument is formulated based on the information presented in the overview.

Developed by Elliot, Husse and Gresham (1993), the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS) was published in 1990 by the American Guidance Services for the purposes of:

(1) identifying and classifying children suspected of having social behavior problems; and

(2) assisting in the development of appropriate interventions for those identified as having social behavior problems.

Although, theoretically, all children can take the test, it is especially geared toward handicapped children or children with mild to moderate learning disabilities.

The SSRS is a standardized, norm-referenced instrument providing assessments of children's social skills, academic competence, and problem behavior using three evaluation methods: parent ratings, teacher ratings, and children's ratings. The parent and teacher forms are subdivided into preschool, elementary and secondary levels.

The multi-rater approach yields assessments in the domains of Cooperation (all forms), Assertion (all forms), Self-Control (all forms), Responsibility (Pa

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els of predictive validity. Studies published since those presented in the manual have also shown at least a moderate level of discriminant validity for the instrument (Bramlett, 1994); although there are indications that if behavioral and psychoemotional problems are very severe, there may be validity problems (Kutash, 1993). The SSRS has several strengths. The first of these includes an Assessment-Intervention Record (AIR) which enables the integration of social skills assessment information with planned intervention strategies, thereby allowing professionals to more easily develop interventions based on assessment findings. A second strength of the instrument is that the manual provides clear and detailed descriptions of all SSRS goals and objectives as well as a user-friendly guide. In addition, the test is easy to administer and easy to score. Finally, the use of multiple raters provides a more broad-based assessment of social skills than any instrument using a single rater system, e.g., a self-report instrument. The SSRS also has several weaknesses. Some of these were just mentioned such as the problems with the standardization sample, and mixed reliability levels across the forms. Other weaknesses include the fac

Category: Psychology - S