Performance of Disturbed and Nondisturbed Boys on a Role Play Test of Social Competence.

A videotape-administered role play test of positive and negative assertion, the Behavioral Test of Interpersonal Competence for Children (BTICC), was adminis tered to 17 emotionally disturbed and a matched sample of 17 nondisturbed boys ages 9-11 attending a nonurban school system. The two samples did not differ on mean age or IQ. Boys' role play responses to the videotaped narration and child prompt were scored from audiotapes for content, voice quality, latency, and number of words. The content of boys' responses to positive, negative, and combined assertion scenes as well as the incidence of inappropriate assertion (i. e., withdrawn or aggressive responses) on the negative assertion scenes differen tiated the disturbed and nondisturbed boys. Two content scores entered into a significant discriminant function. The place of role plays in the assessment of boys suspected of behavioral or emotional disturbance is discussed. Future research is needed to determine the validity of the BTICC with more distinct clinical subgroups. The past decade has seen a geometric increase in studies on children's peer relationships. One reason for this surge of interest is the documented relationship between children's peer acceptance and later behavioral adjustment and learning both in and out of school. Children who are socially isolated or rejected are more likely to drop out of school (Ullman, 1957) to be later identified as juvenile delinquents (Roff, Sells, & Golden, 1972), and to have mental health problems as adults (Cowen, Pederson, Barbigian, Izzo, & Trost, 1973). The view of these children as deficient in important social skills is well supported in the literature. Differences in interpersonal behavior between sociometrically derived status groups have been found by several researchers (Dodge, 1983; Gottman, Gonso, & Rasmussen, 1975; Putallaz & Gottman, 1981). These behavioral differences are even found when different social status children are placed in new groups of unfamiliar children (Coie & Kupersmidt, 1983). Approaches to teaching social skills to skill deficient children have resulted in improvements in children's sociometric status as well as classroom behaviors (Gottman, Gonso, & Schuler, 1976; Gresham & Nagle, 1980; Ladd, 1981). The literature on the assessment of social skills has lagged behind the literature on social skills intervention. Although sociometrics are useful in identifying children who are defi cient in social skills, they do not specify the nature of the problem or suggest intervention approaches. Direct observations, teacher checklists, and role play measures are more useful for selecting appropriate targets for social skill training. One advantage of role play measures is the commonality of format between assessment and treatment. The most commonly reported social skills intervention programs utilize role plays in modeling and behavioral rehearsal. This commonality allows for an easier translation of assessment results into treatment targets. A typical role play test presents a child with a standard set of scenes, or situations. The child is presented with a live or recorded prompt and asked to respond to the prompt as he or she would if actually in that situation. By selecting different scenes, the experimenter can observe a variety of skills (e.g., accepting a compliment, refusing an unreasonable request) that might require days of observing in the natural environment. Also, as Asher (1983) points out, the types of observations that can be made in classrooms are constrained by such situational variables as the nature of the activity in the classroom and the seating arrangement. 24 November 1985 Behavioral Disorders This content downloaded from 207.46.13.60 on Sat, 16 Apr 2016 04:36:05 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Due to the promise of role plays in the assessment of children's social competence, several researchers have investigated the reliability and validity of role play measures with children (Freeman, Rosenthal, Donahoe, Schlundt, & McFall, 1978; Gaffney & McFall, 1981 ; Gottmanetal., 1975;Ollendick, 1981; Reardon, Hersen, Bellack, & Foley, 1979; Van Hasselt, Hersen, & Bellack, 1981; Vosk, Forehand, Parker, & Rickard, 1982; Williamson, Moody, Granberry, Letherman, & Blouin, 1983). These researchers have employed numerous approaches to determining the validity of role plays; however, criterion-related validity is the critical issue in evaluating validity of role plays as measures of social competence. Researchers reporting criterion-related validity include Freedman et al. (1978) with delin quent and nondelinquent boys; Gaffney and McFall (1981) with delinquent and nondeli quent girls; Gottman et al. (1975) with sociometric status; and Ollendick (1981) with sociometric status for girls (but not for boys). Researchers failing to demonstrate external validity for role play tests include Beck, Forehand, Neeper, and Baskin (1982) for naturalistic behaviors; Ollendick (1981) with teacher ratings and naturalistic behaviors for boys and girls; Reardon et al. (1979) for teacher ratings; Van Hasselt et al. (1981) for sociometric status, naturalistic behaviors, and teacher ratings; Vosk et al. (1982) for sociometric status; and Williamson et al. (1983) for teacher ratings and sociometric status. Explanations for inconsistent findings include the variety of role play instruments, types of role play scenes, administration procedures, response requirements, methods of scoring, and different ways of defining and selecting criterion groups. With the exception of Hughes and Hall (1984) no role play test has utilized a prompt delivered by a child. Instead, adult prompters have been utilized. It is reasonable to expect that a child's role play response would differ with a child partner versus an adult partner. In the Hughes and Hall study 51 regular class sixth grade children were administered a role play test of social competence, the Behavioral Test of Interpersonal Competence for Children (BTICC). The BTICC was significantly correlated with sociometric status as well as with several additional measures of social competence for girls but not for boys. The discriminant functions derived from the BTICC for separating sociometric groups based on "play with" ratings and rejection nominations were significant for girls. For boys the derived function separated acceptance nomination groups but not groups based on play with ratings or rejection nominations. The authors suggested that the classification groups for the discriminant functions did not represent widely separated groups. I n each case a mean split on the sociometric variable was used to form the classification groups. Better classifi cation results from the BTICC with boys might be obtained given more widely separated criterion groups. The purpose of the present study was to determine the criterion-related validity of the BTICC with emotionally disturbed and nonemotionally disturbed boys.