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 would focus on both adolescents and young adults in order to gauge the importance of social skills in the transition from youth to adulthood (Bullis, Bull, Johnson, & Johnson, 1994).
The newly-developed TCSK was theoretically derived from the "Transitions Initiative" (Will, 1984), in which a government study found that attention should be directed to adolescents with disabilities and the problems and issues surrounding their entry into adult life. Research f...