Test of Community-based Social Skill Knowledge

The instrument to be analyzed is the Test of Community-based Social Skill Knowledge (TCSK). The instrument was first developed by Freedman, Rosenthal, Donahoe, Schlundt, and McFall (1978) and was used to assess the social skills of adolescents. However, the version analyzed in this paper is a modified form developed by Bullis, Bull, Johnson, and Johnson (1994) that broke the original down into separate male and female instruments, and reoriented it to focus on both adolescents and young adults.

The original form of the instrument was developed by Freedman, et al, in order to generically assess various adolescents' social skills. Subsequently, various researchers began using the scale to examine how social skills predicted or were correlated with other social-psychological constructs such as substance abuse or delinquency (Landman, Irvin, & Halpern, 1980; Gaffney & McFall, 1981; Gaffney, 1984). Bullis and Foss (1986), extended the use of the TCSK beyond adolescents and measured the social skills of mildly retarded individuals. As a result of this research, they posited that poor social skills might also predict adult dysfunctions, such as marital difficulties, employment problems, violence, and arrests. However, the TCSK was not designed for adults, and no other then-existing instrument fit the bill. Several years later, Bullis led another research team in the development of such an instrument. However, rather than writing a survey to assess adults, this version wou

Related Essays

Parenting Skill Development Program A Community-Based Parenting S .... described a school-based parenting skill and involvement .... perspective not merely to test theory, but .... type of services at a community-based social work agency. .... (5375 22 )

Proposed Study on Problem at a Community Center .... Mastery and Achievement Test) were well .... public awareness and developing community based strategies for .... showing improved interest, social skill development, etc .... (7017 28 )

Inclusive Schooling in Saudi Arabia .... supported employment programs, and community-based programs. .... a formulation of research hypotheses based on review .... Further, the study will test several research .... (4318 17 )

School-Based Violence Prevention Programs .... and the Wilcoxin Rank-Sum test for nonparametric .... It was concluded that the community based peer-mentoring program .... school peer mediating program is based on the .... (5001 20 )

School Guidance Interventions .... and ten covariates--pre-test scores on .... assessments, extra curricular activities, research, and community. The curriculum is competency based and prescriptively .... (8235 33 )

test can sensitize the respondents to the instrument, and cause them to try to remember how they answered before on their retest, resulting in an over-estimation of reliability. Second, the subjects' views may have changed due to some uncontrolled event between the two tests, resulting in substantially different answers and thus an under-estimation of reliability (Smith, p. 47). The internal consistency method of assessing reliability are designed to surmount these problems. In this method, the instrument is administered to the entire group one time, then the instrument is divided into two or more subsets. These items are then measured against one another to determine whether the responses hang together and maintain a consistency of responses (Smith, p. 47). The TCSK was also tested by this measure, called coefficient alpha. Again, the authors did not report the specific statistics of these tests, but report that they fall within the standard of alpha > .75 (Bullis, Bull, Johnson, & Johnson, p. 9). According to Smith, an instrument is said to be valid "when it fully and accurately measures the construct it purports to measure" (p. 48). There are three types of validity. Content validity determines whether an instrument

Category: Psychology - T