Assessing the Social Skills and Problem Behaviors of Adolescents With Severe Disabilities Enrolled in General Education Classes.
High-schoolers with severe disabilities look socially behind, but short, peer-linked social-skills classes can close the gap quickly.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Tonnsen et al. (2016) asked teachers and parents to rate high-school students with severe disabilities. All students were in general-education classes. The team used two checklists: one for social skills and one for problem behavior.
The goal was to see how these teens stacked up against typical peers.
What they found
Both adults gave low scores for social skills and high scores for problem behaviors. The gap was large enough to place the students in the bottom quarter of typical teens.
In short, the students were seen as having far fewer social strengths and more behavior issues than classmates.
How this fits with other research
The picture looks bleak, but it sets the stage for hope. Spriggs et al. (2016) ran a short, twice-weekly social-skills class for four teens with ID. After three weeks all four showed big, lasting gains on the same skills L et al. flagged as weak.
Maddox et al. (2015) got mixed but teachable results with video modeling for ASD-ID teens in the same inclusive setting. Three of four students learned new social moves, though they needed extra help to use them outside the training room.
Gilmore et al. (2022) pooled 16 trials of group social-skills classes for teens with ASD. The review shows moderate boosts in social knowledge and clear drops in social impairment, backing up the smaller single studies above.
Why it matters
Use the low scores as your baseline, not a life sentence. The same population can make fast progress when you add brief, structured social-skills lessons. Start with peer-friendly BST or video modeling blocks, track weekly, and fold peers into practice so gains travel to lunch, gym, and hallway.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Although enhancing the social competence of students with severe disabilities has long remained a prominent focus of school-based intervention efforts, relatively little attention has focused on identifying the most critical social and behavioral needs of students during high school. We examined the social skills and problem behaviors of 137 adolescents with severe disabilities from the vantage point of both special educators and parents. We sought to identify areas of potential intervention need, explore factors associated with social skill and problem behavior ratings, and examine the extent to which teachers and parents converged in their assessments of these needs. Our findings indicate teachers and parents of high school students with severe disabilities rated social skills as considerably below average and problem behaviors as above average. In addition, lower social skills ratings were evident for students with greater support needs, lower levels of overall adaptive behavior, and a special education label of autism. We found moderate consistency in the degree to which teachers and parents aligned in their assessments of both social skills and problem behavior. We offer recommendations for assessment and intervention focused on strengthening the social competence of adolescents with severe disabilities within secondary school classrooms, as well as promising avenues for future research.
American journal on intellectual and developmental disabilities, 2016 · doi:10.1352/1944-7558-121.4.327