Sistema de avaliação de habilidades sociais (SSRS-BR) para crianças com deficiência mental: validação e padrões normativos

Abstract

The international literature has shown that, in general, there is an impairment of social skills in mental disability and other frameworks for special educational needs. In the Brazilian context, there are few studies that assess social skills in children with mental disability and one of the reasons seems may be a lack of assessment tools validated and standardized for this population. Considering these shortcomings, the objectives of this research were: (a) assess psychometric properties of the Brazilian version of the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS-BR), forms answered by teachers and students, specifically internal consistency and convergent validity, in a sample of children with mental disabilities, (b) make the analysis of criterion validity, based on the comparison between the results of a sample of children with mental disabilities and children with typical development, and (c) to establish normative standards of the SSRS-BR for children with mental disabilities, compared to the patterns found for children with typical development. Participants of the survey 84 children with mental disabilities and their teachers, selected in a special school, which assessed social skills, behavior problems and academic competence using SSRS-BR. About internal consistency, were found positive and significant correlations between the global scales and all subscales of the same construct, and positive correlations between the scales of social skills and academic competence and negative between the scales of social skills and behavior problems. Regarding the criterion validity in the evaluation by students, it was observed that in a global scale of social skills and in five of the subscales (responsibility, empathy, assertiveness, self-control and expression of positive feeling), the instrument was able to differentiate, significantly, the groups of children with and without disability. The version for evaluation by teachers was able to discriminate significantly groups with and without disabilities in the global scales of social skills, behavior problems and academic competence and in the subscales of self-control, internalizing problems and externalizing problems. The convergent validity was not satisfactory, because there was no correlation between the global scales and subscales common in the forms of evaluation by students and by teachers. Differences were observed between the normative standards for children with and without disability, in both instruments, and the disabled group showed lower cut-off points for the scales of social skills and academic competence and higher for the scale of behavior problems. This study allows provide the scales of SSRS-BR for use in future researches, assessment procedures and programs of intervention in the area of Social Skills Training, in children with mental disabilities.