Assessing Children's Social Skills

Recent years have witnessed the widespread development of interventions aimed at teaching children effective interaction skills. Increasingly, behavioral roleplay tests are being used to evaluate the effectiveness of these interventions. This paper outlines the development and statistical evaluation of a behavioral roleplay test for assessing children's social skills. A test of the measure's validity indicated that there was little relationship between a child's score and his or her peer sociometric ratings. In light of these findings, the methodology by which the test was developed and evaluated is discussed. Possible alterations in the methodology are suggested as well as directions for future research.