| Social skills development studies have indicated that special education students have more social skills deficits than mainstream students. Although emotionally disturbed students have been viewed as having more social skills deficits than any other group of special education students (Gables, Hendrickson, & Rutherford, 1991), it is not clear which of the emotionally disturbed students actually have social skills deficits. This is because the emotionally disturbed category consists of students with various psychiatric disorders. The present study examined social skills deficits among special education students who met criteria for Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD; American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Twenty seven special education high school students diagnosed as ODD (experimental group) and 27 special education high school non-ODD students (control group) were rated by two sets of teachers along the three scales of the Social Skills Rating System-Teacher (SSRS-T; Gresham, & Elliott, 1990). Participants were matched on the following variables: age, gender, socioeconomic status, IQ, reading and math scores. A modified version of the parent version of the Diagnostic Interview for Children and Adolescents-Revised (DICA-R; Reich, Leickock & Shanfeld, 1995) was used to determine the presence of ODD. The interview was modified to be used by teachers. Students' social skills were assessed via the SSRS-T. It was hypothesized that compared to non-ODD students, ODD students would be rated by their teachers significantly: (a) lower on the Social Skills scale of the SSRS-T, (b) higher on the Problem Behaviors scale of the SSRS-T, and (c) lower on the Academic Competence scale of the SSRS-T. Data were analyzed via three one-tail, paired t-tests using the scores from the three sub-scales of the SSRS-T. The results supported the hypotheses. One unexpected finding was that the second group of teachers rated students significantly higher than the first group on the Problem Behaviors scale. It was assumed that the second group of teachers rated them higher because they had more time to observe inappropriate behaviors. Implications of these findings for social skills training and inclusion into mainstream are addressed as well as limitations of the study and suggestions for future research. |
