Social Skills Rating System-Brazilian Version (SSRS-BR): Psychometric multicenter studies and preparation of manual for application and interpretation

• Grant number: 11/18504-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: December 01, 2011
• End date: May 31, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Fundamentals and Assessments in Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Zilda Aparecida Pereira Del Prette
• Grantee: Lucas Cordeiro Freitas
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Studies have shown positive associations between a well-developed repertoire of social skills and several indicators of adaptive functioning in childhood, such as: satisfactory relationships with peers and adults, academic achievement, positive social status in the group and a lower frequency of behavior problems. In this sense, assess child social behaviors through validated instruments becomes important as a measure of prevention and intervention related to deficits in social skills. This project fits into the broader set of validation and standardization studies to Brazil of the American scales of the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS-BR), which assess social skills, behavior problems and academic competence, through specific forms to children, parents and teachers. Until this date, validity and reliability studies have been conducted with a sample (N = 416) of typical development children in regular schools (Bandeira, Del Prette, Del Prette & Magalhães, 2009) and a sample (N = 84) of children with intellectual disabilities in special school (Del Prette & Del Prette, 2010a, 2010b). The intent of this proposal is to develop four areas of research, from a database with a larger multicenter sample of 1115 participants from four Brazilian states (SP, MG, RJ and PR): (a) carry out further psychometric studies of construct validity of the scales through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, (b) verify the influence of sociodemographic variables on the results obtained by the multicenter total sample, (c) establish new normative standards for interpretation of the scales and (d) prepare the technical manual for application, calculation and interpretation of the SSRS-BR. (AU)