Evaluating AIDS-related social skills in Anglo and Latino adolescents. Focus on assessment.
Score teen refusal skills in two buckets — anxiety body language and assertive words — because they move differently across gender and culture.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team asked Anglo and Latino teens to role-play saying no to risky sex.
They videotaped each teen and scored four things: anxiety face, body language, words used, and how firm the teen sounded.
Then they ran a factor analysis to see which scores clump together.
What they found
Two clear bundles showed up. Bundle one: shaky voice, frozen face, and fidgety hands. Bundle two: strong words and clear tone.
Girls scored higher on bundle one. Latino boys looked more anxious than Anglo boys, even when their words were fine.
A skill that looks good on paper may still feel wrong to the teen — social validity varied by item.
How this fits with other research
Sisson et al. (1993) did the same factor trick four years earlier on depression scales for teens with ID. Both studies say: break scores into parts before you label a kid.
Maïano et al. (2011) and Pellicano et al. (2022) later used factor analysis to shorten the CES-D for teens with ID. They copied the idea that one number can’t sum up a mood — just like Shearn et al. (1997) showed one number can’t sum up refusal skill.
Pitchford et al. (2019) compared U.S. and Spanish teens on self-determination and also found ethnic item quirks. Their cross-cultural warning echoes the Latino/Anglo split here.
Why it matters
When you test social skills, score fear and words on separate sheets. A teen may sound assertive yet tremble — or stay calm but waffle. Track both to pick the right teaching target and to avoid missing culture- or gender-based anxiety that masks real skill.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Split your social-skills rubric: add a 1-5 anxiety column and a 1-5 assertive-content column, then teach the lowest score first.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the assessment of AIDS-related social skills (measured by role play) in Anglo and Latino adolescents (N = 383) and to explore ethnic and gender differences on these skills. Eight skills were assessed on five measures evaluating molar, molecular, verbal, and nonverbal dimensions of behavior. Interrelationships between skills and measurement dimensions were examined using factor analysis. Results revealed that Anxiety and Nonverbal Behavior each loaded across different skills on individual respective factors, whereas verbal content and assertiveness measures loaded by skill on separate factors. Differences in skill emerged between female and male, and Latino and Anglo youth. Preliminary social validity data were collected for the skills assessed. Social validity results were skill specific, with judges validating certain skills and certain measurement dimensions more than others. Implications for future assessment and intervention research of AIDS-related social skills are discussed.
Behavior modification, 1997 · doi:10.1177/01454455970213002