Assessment of social skills of native American preschoolers: Teachers' and parents' ratings

Donna L. Powless, Stephen N. Elliott

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

22 Scopus citations

Abstract

The overall goal of this investigation was (a) to provide a cross-cultural understanding of young children's social behavior and adults' expectations for behavior and (b) to advance knowledge of interrater correlations for the Social Skills Rating System. The sample consisted of 50 Native American subjects and a matched sample (by age and gender) of 50 white subjects from Head Start programs in the U.S. Midwest. The results indicated that white preschoolers exhibited social skills more frequently according to the ratings of their teachers and parents, than did Native American preschoolers. In addition, low correlations were found between ratings of the importance of social behaviors by teachers of Native American and teachers of white preschoolers and between parents of Native American and parents of white preschoolers. Parents and teachers showed a moderate agreement in their ratings of the frequency of expression of social skills by Native American preschoolers, and in their ratings of the importance of social skills across the Assertion subdomain. This was unlike findings for ratings by the white parents and teachers of frequency of expression and importance of social skills, which exhibited low agreement. Explanations for these findings included cultural similarity, setting, and race commonalities within the Native American sample. The implications of this study for the assessment of preschoolers are provided and future areas to research are outlined.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)293-307
Number of pages15
JournalJournal of School Psychology
Volume31
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 1993
Externally publishedYes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Education
  • Developmental and Educational Psychology

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