A Fresh Pair of Eyes: A Blind Observation Method for Evaluating Social Skills of Children with ASD in a Naturalistic Peer Situation in School.

Dekker et al. (2016) built a new tool called the Social Skills Observation Measure (SOM). They wanted to watch kids with autism in real school settings without the kids knowing they were being scored. Trained observers sat in class and coded peer social acts during normal recess and group work. The team then checked how closely two different observers agreed on each child’s score.

The SOM earned good-to-excellent inter-rater reliability. That means two people watching the same child gave very similar scores. The live codes also caught details parents and teachers missed on their usual rating forms. In short, the tool gave a fresh, reliable look at authentic peer behavior.

The SOM joins a family of new video-coded tools. Grzadzinski et al. (2016) and Kitzerow et al. (2016) showed the BOSCC also reaches high reliability and picks up change in preschoolers. Byrne et al. (2022) later stretched the BOSCC to phrase-speech kids, just as Vera widened assessment into school peer zones. Wang et al. (2011) warned that old questionnaires like SSRS and PKBS are stable but slow to show growth; Vera’s live blind method may fix that gap by catching small natural shifts teachers overlook.

If you run social skills groups for elementary or middle-schoolers with autism, you now have a quick, sneaky yardstick. Bring an extra staff member, give them the SOM sheet, and collect five minutes of recess data before and after your intervention. You get numbers that parents, teachers, and payers can trust—without extra testing sessions or camera gear.