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Conceptual analysis article, social, emotional, and behavioral skills: an integrative model of the skills associated with success during adolescence and across the life span.

• 1 Department of Educational Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, United States
• 2 Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
• 3 Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, United States
• 4 Department of Psychology, Colby College, Waterville, ME, United States
• 5 Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany

Social, emotional, and behavioral (SEB) skills encompass a wide range of competencies related to how individuals build and maintain relationships, understand and manage emotions, pursue goals, and learn from experience. Despite near-consensus on the importance of SEB skills for success in life, there are numerous frameworks that simultaneously converge and diverge in how they define and measure SEB skills. In this article, we discuss our integrative model encompassing five broad skill domains: Self-Management, Innovation, Social Engagement, Cooperation, and Emotional Resilience Skills (Soto et al., 2021a). Our model defines SEB skills as skills (i.e., what someone is capable of doing) and not traits (i.e., what someone tends to do). Using this definition and model as a foundation, we argue for the importance of investigating SEB skill development during adolescence, a period where SEB skills may be both particularly amenable to change and particularly predictive of life outcomes. In particular, we highlight how SEB skills allow adolescents to take advantage of the new opportunities afforded to them as they make major cognitive and social transitions.

Introduction

A person’s successful development is multicausal. No one factor, whether at the biological, psychological, social, or historical levels, guarantees a person’s positive development. Nevertheless, researchers have long sought to identify the individual characteristics that can alter a person’s chances for positive development. In recent years, this search has led scholars across the social sciences to investigate the nature, structure, assessment, and correlates of a broad range of personal qualities, sometimes termed noncognitive skills, character strengths, socioemotional competencies, or social, emotional, and behavioral (SEB) skills ( Soto et al., 2021b ). These constructs hold promise as potential predictors of positive development. Many studies have demonstrated their associations with positive development, and there is some evidence suggesting their malleability ( Duckworth et al., 2007 ; Durlak et al., 2011 ; Heckman and Kautz, 2012 ; Kautz et al., 2014 ; Nagaoka et al., 2015 ; National Research Council, 2012 ; OECD, 2015; Taylor et al., 2017 ).

But beneath this promise, fundamental issues of conceptualization and measurement remain. There is no consensus as to what these personal qualities are and what they are not. There is also no consensus taxonomy of personal qualities, nor is there a consensus of these qualities’ developmental characteristics. We believe that the field’s ability to best understand and promote positive development requires placing some “stakes in the ground” that begin to delineate a shared path forward.

We aim to build toward consensus in this field by providing our responses to four key questions. First , how should the personal qualities that predict positive development be conceptualized? We argue that these qualities are best understood as skills and not traits. We define SEB skills as a person’s capacities to maintain social relationships, regulate emotions, and manage goal- and learning-directed behaviors ( Soto et al., 2021a ). Second , how can the wide range of SEB skills be taxonomized? We argue the behaviors included in the Big Five personality domains provide a comprehensive foundation for a skills-based taxonomy that is both conceptually and empirically justifiable. Third , how should SEB skills be measured? We argue that self- and observer-reported skills inventories are optimal. Fourth , is there a period of the life span that holds particular promise for SEB skills research and interventions? We argue for adolescence as a focal period for SEB skills research.

How Should the Personal Qualities That Predict Positive Development Be Defined and Conceptualized?

At present, most reviews in this broad literature begin similarly: by listing the historical evolution and the contemporary abundance of terms used to describe the field (e.g., soft skills, social and emotional skills, character strengths) ( National Research Council, 2012 ; Duckworth and Yeager, 2015 ; Berg et al., 2017 ; Abrahams et al., 2019 ). A grasp of the field’s history does provide valuable context. But we encourage readers to look past the differences in existing and historical terms for the personal qualities associated with success in life, and instead focus on the similarities and differences in the way most of these terms are conceptualized. Regarding similarities, Duckworth and Yeager (2015) noted that the various terms in this literature tend to share five core features: These personal qualities are conceptualized to be 1) beneficial to a person and their social partners; 2) expressed most clearly in relevant situations; 3) distinct from measured intelligence; 4) somewhat stable over time; but also 5) malleable, or potentially responsive to interventions ( Duckworth and Yeager, 2015 ).

These similarities seem a reasonable starting point from which to build consensus. However, this “big tent” includes an extremely broad range of personal qualities that can include beliefs, attitudes, values, motivations, personality traits, and skills. From our vantage, this inclusivity actually stifles opportunities to come to conceptual or measurement consensus. Thus, as a first stake in the ground, we recently suggested shifting the field’s focal length from a broad and inclusive set of personal qualities to, more narrowly, SEB skills, which we defined as capacities to maintain social relationships, regulate emotions, and manage goal- and learning-directed behaviors ( Soto et al., 2021b ).

Our conceptualization adds two important distinctions to Duckworth and Yeager’s core features. First, SEB skills are not traits, or a person’s “average” or “typical” behavior in a domain. We intentionally define SEB skills as capacities, or how someone is capable of behaving when the situation calls for it ( Paulhus and Martin, 1987 ; Wallace, 1966 , Wallace, 1967 ) 1 . This distinction recalls early work in personality and applied psychology that distinguished between typical and maximal performance of behavior ( Sackett et al., 1988 ; Turner, 1978 ). In making this distinction, we are not arguing that traits do not relate with people’s relationships, emotions, goals, and learning; they certainly do. Nor do we argue that skills should replace traits as predictors of positive development. Instead, we propose that traits and skills may predict different aspects of positive development or predict positive development in different ways. A second added component of our definition is that it delineates the broad categories of capacities that can be considered SEB skills. In our conceptualization, SEB skills encompass a diverse set of behaviors that include, for example, how people socially interact and collaborate, how they manage and modulate their emotions, and how they work toward accomplishing shorter-term tasks and longer-term goals.

Why introduce a new term in “social, emotional, and behavioral skills” when others already proliferate? Researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and the general public will ultimately decide which term best captures this domain. However, we believe that the term SEB skills provides some benefit in that it integrates two bodies of research that have developed concurrently across the last several decades. Acknowledging the work of developmental psychologists and educational researchers, SEB skills incorporates the “social and emotional” terminology common in those fields. Similarly, the “behavioral” component SEB skills acknowledges the work of personality and motivational psychologists, as well as economists, who have suggested that a constellation of skills or actions related to self-regulation, self-control, and conscientiousness are malleable and play a critical role in predicting positive life outcomes ( Almlund et al., 2011 ; Heckman and Kautz, 2012 ; Kautz et al., 2014 ; Scorza et al., 2016 ). Finally, we intentionally chose the word “skill” both to emphasize that these attributes are malleable, trainable capacities (rather than fixed traits) and because it is colloquial and accessible to researchers, practitioners, and the general public.

How Can the Wide Range of Possible Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Skills Be Taxonomized?

Just as there are many terms for constructs related to SEB skills, there are also many (at least 136; Berg et al., 2017 ) different frameworks or taxonomies for organizing specific personal attributes within broader domains. Prominent frameworks for constructs that are conceptually-adjacent to SEB skills include, for example, the National Research Council’s 21st Century competencies, CASEL’s Framework for Social and Emotional Learning, the OECD’s Framework for Social and Emotional Skills, and the Lerner and Lerner’s Five Cs Model of Positive Youth Development 2 . These prominent taxonomies of SEB skills are compared and contrasted (relative to our proposed taxonomy, described later) in Table 1 .

TABLE 1 . Aligning prominent taxonomies of competencies, character strengths, and skills.

The similarities across models in Table 1 provide some footholds toward taxonomic consensus. For one, in balancing the needs to capture a broad range of skills while also remaining intuitive and parsimonious, attribute taxonomies tend to include three to five domains. Moreover, the included domains overlap considerably across taxonomies in their psychological content. Among three-domain models, the 21st century competencies taxonomy and the character strengths taxonomy provide an illustrative example. Both models include three skill domains, labeled as “intrapersonal,” “interpersonal,” and “cognitive” or “intellectual” capacities or strengths. Prominent five-domain taxonomies are also often characterized by considerable overlap. For example, the CASEL taxonomy differentiates interpersonal capacities into two domains: those for setting and pursuing goals (self-management competencies), and those for understanding one’s attitudes, values, and emotions (self-awareness competencies). Similarly, the Five Cs taxonomy breaks down intrapersonal capacities into those used to achieve goals in life domains important to youth, like school, work, and athletics (competence skills), and those youth use to support their emotions, motivation, and values (confidence skills).

But there are also important differences across taxonomies. Some of these issues are conceptual: existing taxonomies sometimes focus on one type of personal quality (e.g., the OECD taxonomy is comprised of only traits), whereas others include multiple types like skills, traits, attitudes, values, and more. Other differences are structural: some frameworks are composed of superordinate attribute domains alone (e.g., the 5Cs model). Among those taxonomies that do include subordinate attributes or “facets,” there is variation in these attributes’ number and content.

Using the Big Five Personality Domains to Taxonomize Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Skills

If there are already over one hundred taxonomies for SEB skills and related concepts, then why introduce another? We have two motivations. First, we believe that a consensus taxonomy should be comprehensive , accounting for the wide range of skills associated with success. Second, a consensus taxonomy should be evidence-based , deriving from an expansive body of research that informs its structure and guides future research. Work in each of the existing frameworks has made meaningful contributions, but in our view, none fully satisfies both conditions.

We have proposed that SEB skills can be organized in terms of five broad domains informed by the Big Five personality traits ( Soto et al., 2021a ), an organizational framework that we believe satisfies both conditions stipulated above. Relevant to the requirement of comprehensiveness, the Big Five provide a wide-ranging conceptual and empirical framework for studying human behavior. Behaviors associated with Conscientiousness and Openness to Experience relate to educational and occupational attainment ( Heckman and Kautz, 2012 ; Noftle and Robins, 2007 ; Wilmot and Ones, 2019 ). Behaviors relevant to the Extraversion and Agreeableness domains are associated with a wide range of interpersonal behaviors ( DeYoung et al., 2013 ; McCrae and Costa, 1989 ). Similarly, Extraversion and Emotional Stability capture key characteristics of a person's emotional life (i.e., positive and negative affect; Diener et al., 2003 ).

The Big Five also provide a sufficient evidence base. Research spanning early childhood through old age ( Allemand et al., 2008 ; Roberts and Mroczek, 2008 ; Shiner and DeYoung, 2013 ; Soto and Tackett, 2015 ) has demonstrated that the Big Five constitute a useful taxonomy for summarizing people’s characteristic thoughts, feelings, and behaviors across a wide range of global cultural contexts ( Saucier and Goldberg, 2001 ; Schmitt et al., 2007 ; De Raad et al., 2010 ). We therefore argue that work on SEB skills can usefully adapt this taxonomy by replacing a trait-based conceptualization with one that is skills-based, while using the same behavioral referents. We further propose that this taxonomy’s research base can stimulate a vibrant set of research questions and hypotheses regarding how skills and traits are similar or different in terms of their structure, assessment, development, and outcomes.

In general, we hypothesize that skills and traits sharing the same behavioral referents are positively correlated, due to these common referents as well as the developmental interplay of experience, skill, and disposition. For example, consider leadership. Many adolescents may lack meaningful leadership experience. Nonetheless, if given the proper training, their capacity or skill to lead would be enhanced, even if their proclivity for leadership were lacking. Once armed with the capacity to lead and then given the opportunity to lead as they age, people first relying on their skill could then develop the habitual propensity toward effective leadership, manifest in traits such as assertiveness combined with thoughtful consideration. Conversely, it may be that someone who is dispositionally well-suited for leadership (e.g., high extraversion and agreeableness) chooses or selects leadership experiences that leads to skill development. Despite these strong links, traits and skill can still be differentiated from each other. Consider a person in a leadership position who struggles to actually lead their team (high trait, low skill) or the usually-introverted person who, in a moment of crisis, emerges from their typical support role to lead their team (low trait, high skill).

To begin addressing the developmental interplay of skills and traits, as well as other critical questions, we have developed a conceptual and assessment framework of 32 specific SEB skills arrayed across five domains, and examined these skills’ points of convergence and divergence with alternative models of strengths, competencies, and traits ( Soto et al., 2021a ; Soto et al., 2021b ). Conceptually, the five domains of SEB skills we propose include:

1 Social Engagement Skills: capacities used to actively engage with other people (cf. Extraversion);

2 Cooperation Skills: capacities used to maintain positive social relationships (cf. Agreeableness);

3 Self-Management Skills: capacities used to effectively pursue goals and complete tasks (cf. Conscientiousness);

4 Emotional Resilience Skills: capacities used to regulate emotions and moods (cf. Emotional Stability vs. Neuroticism);

5 Innovation Skills: capacities used to engage with novel ideas and experiences (cf. Openness to Experience).

Table 1 compares our domain-level taxonomy to other prominent taxonomies. Figure 1 provides a visual depiction of our proposed taxonomy, including the individual skill facets. The five SEB skills domains we propose are not rigid, exclusive categories. Our system includes interstitial and compound skills at the intersection of two or more broad domains. We also do not assume at this juncture that our list of 32 facets is complete, and expect that future research will reveal more skills and some reorganization of the overall structure.

FIGURE 1 . A proposed domain-level taxonomy of SEB skills.

How Should Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Skills Be Measured?

To this point, we have argued that SEB skills represent a promising focal point for conceptualizing the personal qualities associated with success. We have also argued that SEB skills can be organized in terms of five broad domains that resemble the Big Five in terms of their social, emotional, and behavioral referents, but are defined as sets of functional capacities rather than traits. We now consider issues of measurement.

At present, a common approach to measuring these attributes is to use the questionnaire format of a personality inventory. These measures commonly use adjectives, phrases, or statements describing behavioral tendencies (e.g., “I got my work done right away instead of waiting until the last minute”). Participants rate how well each item describes their own tendencies, often using a Likert-type format (e.g., Primi et al., 2016 ; Park et al., 2017 ). There are advantages to this approach. Personality inventories can be reliable and valid indicators of thoughts, feelings, motivations, and behaviors ( Wilt and Revelle, 2015 ). Many participants in Western contexts have encountered such measures before and administering the items is cost-effective ( Mehl et al., 2006 ; Vazire, 2006 ; John and Soto, 2007 ).

However, items based in this approach are not ideally suited for our capacities-based conceptualization of SEB skills: they assess a person’s traits more so than their skills ( Paulhus and Martin, 1987 ; Wallace, 1966 , Wallace, 1967 ). Said differently, a trait approach would measure a person’s “mean” level of a particular SEB skill, rather than their “maximal” level or capacity.

We believe that one promising way to efficiently assess capacities are to use skill inventories: questionnaire measures in which each item represents a specific social, emotional, or behavioral skill, and respondents rate their own capacity (or the capacity of a target individual, for observer-reports) to perform that skill when called upon to do so ( Wallace, 1966 , Wallace, 1967 ) 3 . Other researchers in this domain have adopted a similar approach. For example, researchers and educators developed preliminary skill-inventory scales to measure the CASEL competencies of relationship skills, social awareness, self-awareness, self-management, and responsible decision-making ( Davidson et al., 2018 ). Thus, consistent with others, we argue that skill inventories represent a conceptually consistent, reliable, valid, and efficient means to assess SEB skills.

To put this argument into practice and build on the conceptual model illustrated in Table 1 and Figure 1 , our research team and an international group of colleagues has developed a broadband skills inventory based on our proposed five-domain model of SEB skills: the Behavioral, Emotional, and Social Skills Inventory (BESSI; Soto et al., 2021a ). Across a series of seven samples of self-reports and observer-reports ( N = 6,309), we find that the BESSI provides reliable and valid assessment of SEB skill domains and facets. Across these samples, reliability estimates averaged approximately 0.95 for the BESSI’s five major skill domains, and 0.85 for its 32 more-specific skill facets. The BESSI’s measurement structure was adequately modeled by a combination of 5 domain-level and 32 facet-level factors (CFI and TLI ≥0.93, RMSEA and SRMR ≤0.04). The BESSI skill domains and facets converged meaningfully with existing measures of character and developmental strengths, as well as social and emotional learning competencies, while also providing incremental validity beyond the Big Five personality traits (Mean Δ R 2 = 0.10). Moreover, in a longitudinal study of high school students, they concurrently and prospectively predicted a range of consequential outcomes including academic achievement and engagement, occupational interests, social relationships, and well-being.

Is There a Developmental Period That Holds Particular Promise for Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Skills Research and Interventions?

Having proposed our definition and taxonomy for SEB skills and proposed an optimal way to measure these skills, we turn to our last question: Is there a period of the life span that holds particular promise for SEB skills research and interventions? We argue that adolescence ought to be the focal period of SEB skills research. Our rationale is based in decades of psychological science research indicating that adolescence is a period of marked transitions across multiple domains, and that in order to successfully navigate those transitions, youth must use a wide range of complex, newly developing skills.

Developmental Characteristics of Adolescence That Social, Emotional, And Behavioral Skills Development and Importance

Adolescence begins with the onset of puberty—the biological transition to physical maturity. Puberty has been described as a cascade of neurobiological effects that influence growth, metabolic changes, and sexual maturation ( Dahl et al., 2018 ). Beyond puberty’s influence on physical development, changes in structure and function in the brain during puberty spur the cognitive advances that differentiate adolescent cognition from child cognition. For example, significant synaptic pruning and more focused activation in the prefrontal cortex enhance adolescents’ self-management and executive functioning capabilities ( Blakemore and Choudhury, 2006 ; Blakemore, 2012 ). Additional changes in the “social brain” allow adolescents to become more aware of social cues, more sensitive to others’ emotional states, and more cognizant of their own social standing ( Blakemore and Choudhury, 2006 ; Pfeifer and Blakemore, 2012 ; Pfeifer et al., 2013 ).

Though the transition to physical maturity is a hallmark of adolescence, it is not the only transition that adolescents make. The end of adolescence is also marked by the transition to adult social roles, responsibilities, and status. Key developmental tasks of adolescence include completing education, choosing a career, finding a romantic partner, developing healthy habits, establishing close friendships, and getting involved in one’s community. We will review these cognitive and social transitions to demonstrate how many SEB skills are both newly possible and newly critical for adolescents, relative to younger children.

Table 2 provides a guide for our review, highlighting four example SEB skills, their developmental underpinnings within the cognitive transitions of adolescence, and accompanying developmental opportunities during adolescent social transitions. This table does not encompass every relationship between developmental changes, SEB skills, and developmental opportunities. Successful development is multicausal, so while we only list one example SEB skill as relevant to each developmental task, adolescents likely utilize a constellation of SEB skills. Further, the four skills we highlight here have a clear origin within the cognitive transitions of adolescence, making these skills “possible,” as well as clear social implications, making them “critical.”

TABLE 2 . SEB skills in relation to new adolescent developmental abilities and opportunities.

Cognitive Transitions

The cognitive advances of adolescence are rooted in the neurobiological changes of puberty. Significant work within the field of developmental neuroscience has connected changes in structure and function of the brain and connectivity between regions of the brain to the more complex and abstract thinking capabilities, self-management capabilities, and relational thinking capabilities of adolescent cognition. In this section, we will briefly review the newly prominent adolescent cognitive capabilities that correspond to the emergence of the following SEB skills: 1) perspective-taking skill, 2) abstract thinking skill, 3) impulse regulation, and 4) goal regulation.

We define perspective-taking skill as the capacity to understand other people's thoughts and feelings, and numerous findings over the past decade underscore that perspective-taking capacities increase and gain importance during adolescence. For example, adolescents are better able to recognize subtle changes in others’ facial expressions compared to children ( Garcia and Scherf, 2015 ; Kragel et al., 2015 ), and adolescents are more cognizant of others’ mental states ( Masten et al., 2009 ; Pfeifer and Blakemore, 2012 ). Further, as adolescents grow older, others-oriented reasoning becomes more prominent ( Crone, 2013 ), highlighting that adolescents incorporate the thoughts and feelings of others in their decision-making processes.

Also relevant to adolescents’ decision-making processes is abstract thinking skill, the capacity to engage with abstract ideas . Compared to children, adolescents can critically engage with abstract topics such as politics and religion, and think in relativistic terms ( Kuhn, 2009 ; Smetana and Villalobos, 2009 ). These advances in cognition lead to more complex moral reasoning skills. While children tend to justify moral decisions in terms of rewards and punishments, adolescents began to view moral decisions in terms of societal conventions or abstract principles such as equity or the sanctity of human life ( Eisenberg et al., 2009 ; Kohlberg, 1987).

Finally, impulse regulation, the capacity to intentionally inhibit impulses , and goal regulation, the capacity to set clear and ambitious goals for oneself , have a robust body of work linking these self-management capacities to structural and functional changes in the prefrontal cortex during adolescence ( Casey et al., 2008 ). Impulse regulation demonstrates linear growth across adolescence with older adolescents better able to resist temptations than younger adolescents ( Duckworth and Steinberg, 2015 ). Further, adolescents are able to think about what is possible, not just what is real, and think about the long-term consequences of their decisions ( Nurmi, 2004 ; Beck and Riggs, 2014 ). Advances in planning and self-management, in addition to increases in future orientation, permit the setting and striving for goals ( Napolitano et al., 2011a ). In the next section, we highlight how these specific skills gain importance as adolescents face new developmental opportunities and challenges.

Social Transitions

Adolescence ends with the complete transition to adult social roles—a boundary difficult to pinpoint as it is subject to variability across domains, cultures, and historical periods (e.g., an American 18 year old serving in the armed forces but forbidden from purchasing alcohol). The emergence of a wide range of SEB skills help adolescents to successfully transition to adult status, roles, and responsibilities. In this section, we feature perspective-taking skill, abstract thinking skill, impulse regulation, and goal regulation in relation to four key developmental opportunities and challenges that exemplify the transition to adult roles: 1) establishing intimate relationships, 2) engaging with the larger community, 3) developing and maintaining healthy habits, and 4) planning for post-secondary education and a career.

Establishing Intimate Relationships

Interpersonal relationships, particularly with peers, are central to the adolescents’ lives. These relationships satisfy multiple roles within the context of adolescent development including serving as socializing agents, as emotional and social support, and as establishing the context of the social hierarchy ( Ryan and Shin, 2018 ). The quality of relationships with peers, parents, and important others is related to immediate benefits in the lives of adolescents such as better grades, psychosocial adjustment, and social skills and long-term benefits as they set the stage for future friendships and romantic partnerships ( Connolly et al., 2000 ; Glick and Rose, 2011 ; Arnold et al., 2017 ; Ryan and Shin, 2018 ).

We argue that use of perspective-taking skill during adolescence leads to more intimate and fulfilling relationships with friends and family. For example, imagine a conflict between two best friends in which one friend posted an unflattering picture of the other on social media. Even if the “poster” didn’t think that the picture is a bad picture of their friend, they could use their perspective-taking skill to see the situation from their best friend’s point of view, accept their friend’s request to take down the picture, and reconcile with their friend. This skill use could therefore help resolve the conflict and preserve the friendship.

Engaging With the Larger Community

As adolescents develop intimate relationships with others, they also develop a more sophisticated understanding of their relationship with people in their community and society at large. The use of abstract thinking skill in tandem with advances in moral and prosocial reasoning enables adolescents to think critically and deeply about their role within the larger community. While advances in moral and prosocial reasoning do not always lead to increases in moral or prosocial behaviors ( Eisenberg et al., 2009 ; Wray-Lake et al., 2016 ), abstract thinking skill may help promote civic engagement in adolescence via the integration of abstract values, such as altruism and civic responsibility into their attitudes and identity.

Supporting these possible links between civic engagement, abstract thinking skill, attitude, and identity, cross-cultural research on youth civic engagement has found associations between normative beliefs about good citizenship and intentions to vote and volunteer ( Metzger and Smetana, 2010 ). Other studies have indicated that volunteers tend to be more altruistic than non-volunteers ( Eisenberg et al., 2009 ) and that having a helping identity mediates the relationship between demographic characteristics, personality, and volunteering ( Matsuba et al., 2007 ). Abstract thinking skill may be especially important when adolescents are faced with information that contradicts their worldview. For example, an adolescent who is apathetic about their obligatory service learning project in school may change their opinion on service when they learn more about issues facing their community. Thinking deeply about what they learned during their service learning project and the question of whether they live in a fair and just society may foster a greater desire to participate in future civic engagement to improve their community.

Developing and Maintaining Healthy Habits

Civic engagement becomes a developmental opportunity during adolescence not only because of advances in cognition and abstract thinking skill, but also because adolescents have more autonomy to direct their behavior. Many scholars have focused their attention on self-management capacities, particularly in youth, because adolescents increasingly make their own decisions. For example, adolescents must leverage their impulse regulation skills when they have to make a choice between doing homework while resisting the urge to check social media or choosing a nutritious snack over junk food.

Indeed, a developmental challenge of adolescence is to establish and maintain healthy habits such as eating a balanced diet, exercising regularly, getting enough sleep, and avoiding smoking. These health behaviors are not only related to short-term benefits for adolescents, but also influence the course of adult habits ( Hallal et al., 2006 ). Impulse regulation may be especially important for adolescents who are beginning a transition to healthier habits. For instance, an adolescent who spends the majority of their time doing sedentary activities may decide to begin exercising to boost their confidence. As they begin a workout regime, they may feel very tempted to skip a few workouts because they recently got a new video game. However, with maximum effort, they keep to their exercise routine. Honing a skill related to resisting and avoiding temptations may be particularly important for adolescents with high sensitivity to rewards and sensation-seeking ( Casey et al., 2008 ; Duckworth and Steinberg, 2015 ).

Planning for Post-Secondary Education and a Future Career

For many adolescents, the most salient task is achievement, and significant research has investigated how an adolescent’s personal qualities ( Komarraju and Nadler, 2013 ; Poropat, 2009 ), relationships ( Ryan and Shin, 2018 ), civic engagement ( Ballard et al., 2019 ), and health behaviors ( Bradley and Green, 2013 ) relate to educational attainment and socioeconomic status in adulthood. As adolescents approach the transition from school to the workforce, they begin to define themselves and direct their own development through their goals ( Napolitano et al., 2011b ; Nurmi, 2004 ; Salmela-Aro, 2009 ). For example, several studies have linked adolescents’ educational and career aspirations and expectations to their educational and vocational outcomes ( Brumley, et al., 2019 ; Lent et al., 2000 ; Salmela-Aro, 2009 ). Aspirations and expectations serve as a first step toward a goal but do not ensure goal attainment. Goal regulation might be particularly important in the face of setbacks. An American adolescent who aspires to attend a competitive university may question their capabilities when they receive a lower-than-expected score on a college entrance exam. However, drawing on their goal regulation capabilities, they make a study plan to better prepare for the next test date.

The Importance of Adolescence Vs. Early Childhood for Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Skills

We have highlighted the potential importance of adolescence for the malleability and real-world implications of SEB skills. An alternative view could assert early childhood’s importance for the development of SEB skills. From this perspective (termed a “gradualist” approach, see Lewis, 1998 ), one could argue that the SEB skills necessary for successful development during adolescence are built upon foundational skills that emerge during early childhood (e.g., executive functions, Diamond, 2013 ). Therefore, interventions should focus on promoting the development of these foundational skills early in life. For example, economists have used a “return on investment” framework to argue for the benefits of skill interventions for young children (e.g., Heckman and Kautz, 2012 4 ). A notable empirical example of such work involves the Perry Preschool Program, which provided evidence that a high-quality preschool altered disadvantaged 3–4 year old’s personality traits, positively impacting future outcomes like standardized test scores ( Heckman et al., 2010a ; Heckman et al., 2010b ).

We do not dispute or discount the results of these studies. The sustained effects of early-childhood interventions on the antecedents of some SEB skills may indeed “cascade” into adolescence. Nor are we suggesting that early-childhood education is unimportant, or that early experiences do not impact later functioning and development. However, we believe that carefully-timed interventions for adolescents that target the precise SEB skills needed to meet a critical challenge may, in some cases, be more effective than interventions with young children targeting the foundational developmental antecedents of those same skills. As a concrete example, 18 year-olds’ scores on standardized tests may be improved more by an intervention promoting their studying-related SEB skills in the months prior to the test than by a longer-term intervention on their executive functions in preschool, thirteen years prior. We therefore believe that a program of research comparing the effects of SEB skills interventions during adolescence and early childhood, both in terms of return-on-investment and developmental benefits, is a critical frontier of this burgeoning field.

We argued that social, emotional, and behavioral (SEB) skills are best conceptualized as skills , what a person is capable of doing when the situation calls for it, and not traits , what a person tends to do across situations. We also presented a comprehensive and evidence-based taxonomy of SEB skills—the Behavioral, Emotional, and Social Skills Inventory (BESSI)— which organizes 32 SEB skills within a five-domain framework. To measure the 32 SEB skills within the BESSI framework, we advanced self- and observer-reported skills inventories as optimal for capturing maximum levels of skill utilization. Finally, we argued that future SEB skill research should focus on adolescence, a developmental period characterized by biological, cognitive, and social transitions that make the development SEB skills possible and makes the utilization of these SEB skills critical.

Author Contributions

All authors contributed to the concepts and theories presented in this work. CN planned the manuscript. CN and MS provided a first draft and finalized the manuscript. CS, BR, and HY provided key edits and revisions to the manuscript.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

1 We note here that others in the field sometimes use the term “capacity” to refer to what we term traits (e.g., see Keizer et al., 2019 for a useful perspective on self-reliance).

2 For those interested in comparing the various frameworks in detail, we suggest the useful “Explore SEL” web resource by Stephanie Jones and the EASEL lab ( easel.gse.harvard.edu ).

3 We note that other approaches to measuring skills are also plausible, such as using situational judgement tests or behavioral tasks. Each approach has strengths and drawbacks. Skills inventories adopt a familiar format for participants, they are cost-effective to administer, and in the case of our early research, seem to have acceptable psychometric characteristics.

4 Others have more recently made the case for adolescence as important periods (e.g., Kautz and Zanoni, 2014 ).

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Keywords: social, emotional, and behavioral skills, socioemotional skills, adolescence, social and emotional learning (SEL), big five

Citation: Napolitano CM, Sewell MN, Yoon HJ, Soto CJ and Roberts BW (2021) Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Skills: An Integrative Model of the Skills Associated With Success During Adolescence and Across the Life Span. Front. Educ. 6:679561. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2021.679561

Received: 12 March 2021; Accepted: 14 June 2021; Published: 28 June 2021.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2021 Napolitano, Sewell, Yoon, Soto and Roberts. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Christopher M. Napolitano, [email protected]

This article is part of the Research Topic

Theory and Empirical Practice in Research on Social and Emotional Skills

• Research article
• Open access
• Published: 23 April 2020

Examining the impact of a social skills training program on preschoolers’ social behaviors: a cluster-randomized controlled trial in child care centers

• Marie-Pier Larose 1 ,
• Isabelle Ouellet-Morin 1 ,
• Francis Vergunst 1 ,
• Frank Vitaro 1 ,
• Alain Girard 1 ,
• Richard E. Tremblay 1 ,
• Mara Brendgen 2 &
• Sylvana M. Côté 1 , 3 , 4  

BMC Psychology volume  8 , Article number:  39 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

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Preschoolers regularly display disruptive behaviors in child care settings because they have not yet developed the social skills necessary to interact prosocially with others. Disruptive behaviors interfere with daily routines and can lead to conflict with peers and educators. We investigated the impact of a social skills training program led by childcare educators on children’s social behaviors and tested whether the impact varied according to the child’s sex and family socio-economic status.

Nineteen public Child Care Centers (CCC, n  = 361 children) located in low socio-economic neighborhoods of Montreal, Canada, were randomized into one of two conditions: 1) intervention ( n =  10 CCC; 185 children) or 2) wait list control ( n  = 9 CCC; 176 children). Educators rated children’s behaviors (i.e., disruptive and prosocial behaviors) before and after the intervention. Hierarchical linear mixed models were used to account for the nested structure of the data.

At pre-intervention, no differences in disruptive and prosocial behaviors were observed between the experimental conditions. At post-intervention, we found a significant sex by intervention interaction ( β intervention by sex  = − 1.19, p  = 0.04) indicating that girls in the intervention condition exhibited lower levels of disruptive behaviors compared to girls in the control condition ( f2 effect size = −  0.15). There was no effect of the intervention for boys.

Conclusions

Girls may benefit more than boys from social skills training offered in the child care context. Studies with larger sample sizes and greater intervention intensity are needed to confirm the results.

Trial registration

Current clinical trial number is ISRCTN84339956 (Retrospectively registered in March 2017). No amendment to initial protocol.

Peer Review reports

The use of early education and care services has substantially increased over the past four decades in most Western industrialized countries [ 1 ]. Early education and care services refer to regular group-based care of children prior to school entry (i.e., under age 5 years in North America) by someone other than the parents. Group-based child care centers (CCC) are one of the most important structured environments for early child socialization. Research suggests that exposure to high-quality child care in preschool settings has a positive effect on children’s social and cognitive school preparedness [ 2 , 3 , 4 ]. Benefits are particularly evident among children raised in poverty or in a low socio-economic status (SES) families [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ]. Attending an early education and care setting is therefore an important preventive strategy for social adjustment and academic attainment problems [ 3 , 8 ].

During the preschool years, children are more likely to exhibit disruptive behaviors such as aggression, non-compliance with rules and negative affectivity especially in social settings like CCCs [ 9 ]. This is because they are required to interact with many peers and educators for many hours each day and because they have not yet acquired sufficient self-control and the social skills necessary to communicate their needs and negative emotions [ 10 , 11 ]. Emotional and cognitive immaturity in CCC settings may also be compounded by a phenomenon known as social contagion whereby preschoolers exposed to peers with disruptive behaviors mirror these behaviors or are forced to respond in similar ways in order to adapt to the social context (e.g. pushing, hitting, kicking) [ 12 , 13 , 14 ]. Children with disruptive behavioral problems tend to disrupt CCC daily routines, leading to conflict with peers and educators [ 15 ]. They are also more likely to be excluded from socially and cognitively stimulating activities and consequently to experience academic and social adjustment difficulties later on [ 15 , 16 ]. It is therefore vital to provide child care environments that promote the development of good social relationships with peers and educators as early as possible so that children can enter the formal education system with adequate social and cognitive abilities [ 17 ].

Children at higher risk of disruptive behavior problems

During the preschool years, boys and girls exhibit similar levels of disruptive behaviors, but males exhibit more problems after school entry [ 14 , 18 ]. Studies show that early preventive interventions delivered in CCC settings can yield short- and long-term benefits [ 19 , 20 , 21 ]. However, the question of whether boys and girls respond differently to these interventions is not well-documented in the literature. Of five preschool intervention studies that targeted children’s socio-emotional development [ 22 ], only one reported testing the interaction between the experimental conditions and the children’s sex [ 23 ]. Girard and colleagues reported that an educator training intervention designed to scaffold peer interactions and use dramatic play reduced aggressive behaviors in boys but not girls [ 23 ]. This suggests that males and females may respond differently to disruptive behavioral intervention programs and further investigation of sex as a putative moderator is therefore warranted.

Another potentially important moderator of the effects of disruptive behavioral intervention programs is the SES of the child’s family. Children from low-SES families are more likely to exhibit disruptive behaviors from preschool to pre-adolescence when compared with children from higher SES families [ 14 , 24 ]. Consequently, children from low-SES families are more prone to enter school with socio-emotional skills deficits that undermine school adjustment [ 15 ]. However, CCC attendance may counteract the influence of a socio-economically deprived family-environment on children’s socio-emotional skills by providing cognitive stimulation and socialization opportunities in a well-structured environment [ 25 ]. Children from low-SES families might therefore be more responsive to interventions delivered in CCC that target social-emotional skills development.

Interventions on Children’s social development in child care context

Behavioral and cognitive management strategies in the context of preschools have shown positive short- and long-term effects on social behaviors, academic readiness and cognitive abilities, especially in the context of Head Start programs [ 20 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 ]. However, outside of the Head Start literature, few studies have investigated the role of child care interventions on children’s socio-emotional development [ 22 ]. Doing so is important because the resources available to educators may vary between Head Start and community-based CCC settings. Head Start is a highly-structured government-run preschool program in which teachers have formal training in early childhood education and follow a prescribed curriculum focused on improving school readiness [ 30 ]. Community-based child care services, in contrast, may be run by public or private agencies, in which child care educators may not endorse a structured curriculum and may or may not have received formal training. Consequently, educators’ capacity to effectively implement social skills programs may vary widely between these contexts.

Previous CCC interventions have typically targeted caregiver-child relationship as their active ingredient and implemented a specific curriculum, i.e., activities around a certain theme [ 22 ]. One example is the Preschool Life Skills (PLS) which focuses on thirteen skills related to instruction-following, functional communication, delay tolerance, and friendship. Studies show that the PLS can significantly reduce disruptive behaviors in preschool children [ 21 ]. Additionally, educators reported that the social skills training was easy to incorporate into their daily routine and improved the social dynamics between children in their groups [ 21 ]. In this project, we evaluate a social skills training similar to the PLS – the “Minipally” program – which focuses on social skills development in a group context. The Minipally program is distinct that it is oriented less towards communication skills and preparedness for the school environment, and more towards social and emotional regulation skills.

Using a cluster-randomized controlled trial, we tested the impact of a social skills training program, delivered by child care educators, on children’s disruptive and prosocial behaviors. We also examined whether children’s sex and family SES moderated the impact of the program. We expected children exposed to the social skills training program to exhibit lower levels of disruptive behaviors and higher levels of prosocial behaviors at post-intervention compared to children in the control condition. Given the lack of evidence showing that children’s sex and family SES moderate the impact of social skills programs in CCC contexts, we did not have hypotheses about these variables.

Study design

Heads of 38 public CCC of the greater Montreal region were invited to participate in the study as they respected our eligibility criterion for participation: i.e., providing services to a minimum of 25% of children from low-income families and being in low-SES neighborhoods. Neighborhood SES was defined according to official provincial [ 31 ] and national criteria [ 32 ]. Lower-income families were those entitled to a special government subsidy program providing free child care access for families with an annual family income below CAN$20,000. After an information session, nineteen CCCs agreed to participate in the 8-month study. The CCCs were randomized with a 1:1 ratio to either: 1) the intervention condition (receiving the program in year 1) or 2) the wait list control condition (receiving the program in year 2) using a computer-generated randomization sequence. Each CCC included between one and 5 groups (mean = 2.32), n =  8 preschoolers led by an educator. Forty-three groups ( n =  361 children) from 19 CCCs were recruited in September 2013 and took part in the study (Fig.  1 : Trial Flow Diagram). Written consent to participate in the study were obtained from parents, educators and directors of the CCCs. The study was approved by the Sainte-Justine Hospital Ethical Research Committee (ref: 2014–565, 3738) and registered on a primary clinical trial registry prior to beginning data analysis. A detailed description of the study protocol describing the rationale behind the Minipally program and its evaluation was published shortly thereafter [ 33 ].

Minipally Trial Flow Chart. Note. CCC = Child Care Centers

Minipally curriculum

The Minipally program is an adaptation of an earlier social skills training programs for school-aged children – i.e. Fluppy program – which was developed by our research team and has shown long-term benefits for academic achievement, employment, income, delinquency and substance abuse [ 34 , 35 ]. Over the past 20 years, experienced educational psychologists and psychoeducators have updated the Fluppy program to address the evolution of best practices in social skill training and adapt it to younger age groups, i.e. preschool-aged children. For example, in the school-aged program, children are taught how to deal with several emotions at the same time (e.g., feeling sad and upset) and to talk about their frustrations, while in the preschool version, children are taught to identify and name emotions and to manage their frustrations using age-appropriate stress-releasing techniques. Thus, while preschool-aged children are taught to use breathing techniques using the butterfly analogy, i.e. to breathe and raise their wings (arms) like a butterfly, school-aged children are taught to pause, withdraw from the situation if possible, and take five deep breaths.

The Minipally curriculum is delivered by each educator to her own group of children using a puppet via 16 play sessions over a period of 8 months. The puppet presents itself as a loyal and enthusiastic friend who visits the CCC to model prosocial behaviors and social inclusion by discussing/playing with his friends (other puppets) and with the children. The full curriculum includes generic components of social skills training programs: introduction to social contact (make and accept contact from others, make requests); problem solving (identifying the problem, generating solutions); self-regulation (deep breathing to calm down, accepting frustration, learning to share, tolerating frustration); and emotional regulation (identifying and expressing emotions, listening to the other). The skills taught in each workshop are presented in Table S 1 in supplementary material.

Specifically, in each workshop, the educator calls on the Minipally puppet who then directly solicits the participation of each child and models adaptive social skills. Like children, Minipally feels great joys, but also has some difficulties with contact with others. The workshops are lively to solicit the participation and feedback of children as Minipally suggests ways for children to do things or asks them for suggestions. During the workshops, Minipally verbalizes a lot; he communicates everything he thinks and does in order to help children remember his actions, words, emotions and attitudes. Minipally is very attentive throughout the workshop as he congratulates children who exhibit the desired behaviors (i.e., wait for his turn, help another child) and encourages those who make efforts to practice the new skills presented. In other words, Minipally acts as a safe and friendly figure for children and a playful tool for child care educators to introduce new concepts and rules in a group context. Child care educators are also invited to reinvest the strategies presented by Minipally in natural settings on a day to day basis: they are encouraged to observe children during free play, reinforce positive behaviors as they occur and invite children to refer to what they learned during the last Minipally visit.

Educator training and supervision

The program was implemented as follows. The 16 workshops of the Minipally curriculum were presented to the educators during a 2-day training delivered by trained professionals (i.e., psychoeducators). After the workshops the psychoeducators remained available by telephone for additional questions during the implementation of the curriculum by the educators. CCC directors were financially compensated for the replacement of the educators while they were trained. Next, the educators delivered the Minipally intervention over 8-months (one session every 2 weeks) and received 12 h (i.e., 4 × 3-h supervision; week 6, 12, 18 and 24 of the trial) of group supervision. During the supervision sessions, between 8 and 10 educators met with a psychoeducator to discuss the challenges associated with the implementation of the Minipally curriculum.

Outcomes: disruptive and prosocial behaviors assessed by educators

Educators completed the Social Behavior Questionnaire [ 36 ] for each child in their group at pre- and post-intervention. Two dimensions of the questionnaire were used: a) Disruptive Behaviors , which included five opposition items (e.g., has been defiant or has refused to comply with an adult request), four impulsivity/hyperactivity items (e.g., has had difficulty waiting for his/her turn in games) and six physical aggression items (three reactive, e.g., has reacted aggressively when teased, and three non-reactive, e.g., has gotten into fights) (Cronbach alpha = 0.86); and b) Prosocial Behaviors (e.g., has helped other children, has shared his toys with others, has comforted a child who was upset; 7 items) (Cronbach alpha = 0.79). Educators rated each item using a 3-point Likert scale according to the frequency of the behavior in the last 2 weeks (0 = never, 1 = sometimes, and 2 = often). For each dimension, we created a cumulative score varying from 0 to 10, with 0 indicating that the child did not exhibit this behavior and 10 indicating that the child often exhibits this behavior.

Covariates and moderators

Family sociodemographic characteristics.

Before beginning the intervention, the child’s parents completed a questionnaire about their child’s CCC attendance details (e.g., number of hours per week, number of months since first attendance), the age and sex of their child, their family composition (e.g., number of siblings), and their socio-demographic background (education and income). A family SES score was then created by combining the maternal education and family income variables (i.e., total income in the household where the child lives most of the time). A low-SES score was assigned if the child lived in a household where the family earned less than CAN$20,000 per year and where the highest level of maternal education was a high school diploma. If the child was living in a household where the family was earning more than CAN$20,000, or where the mother had obtained any training following her high school diploma, the child was assigned to the middle-high SES group.

Statistical analysis

Sample size calculation.

Prior to the recruitment, we performed an a-priori power analysis to determine the sample size needed for the trial. The mean and standard deviation estimates for preschoolers’ disruptive and prosocial behaviours were taken from the Quebec Longitudinal Study of Children’s Development [ 24 ]. We did not have an estimate of the intra-class correlation (ICC) for CCC, so we estimated different scenarios using 0.1, 0.15 and 0.20 as the ICC coefficient and potential effect sizes (i.e., 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5) based on the difference in mean levels of disruptive and prosocial behaviours between the intervention and control conditions. We used Heo’s statistical procedure for cluster randomized trials with three-level units in our sample size estimation [ 37 ]. In other words, our calculation was based on the expected mean number of groups within each child care centers—i.e. 2 groups per child care center. Using the 0.15 ICC scenario, our power calculation indicated that 19 child care services would allow to detect a medium-size effect of the intervention on the selected outcomes, with 90% power at a 2-sided significance level of α = 5%. Our model can be stated as Y ijk  = β 0  + δX i  + u i  + u j (i)  + e ijk ; where Y ijk is the post-intervention response of the i th study participant in the j th educator group nested in the k th child care center, β 0 represents the baseline value of our primary outcome, while δX i is the main effect of the intervention (where X = 0 for wait list group and X = 1 for the intervention group), and the last three terms are random effects at every level of the trial analysis [ 37 ]. This scenario was chosen in accordance with our financial resources and the feasibility of the study [ 33 ]. The cluster randomization ensured that children from the control wait list condition were not exposed to the intervention. After completion of data collection, all control CCC received the social skills training.

Preliminary analysis

Randomization balance analysis.

Despite the use of a cluster randomization, there is still the possibility that individual characteristics are unequally distributed between the two experimental conditions. We therefore performed a series of preliminary analyses to compare the intervention and control conditions at baseline on a host of variables that may directly or indirectly impact the effect of the intervention (see Table  1 ). Only children’s age, the number of months of attendance at the CCC and family SES differed between the intervention and control groups. However, these variables were not significantly associated with any of the outcomes and were therefore not included as control variables based on the randomization balance analysis.

Attrition analysis

No CCC withdrew from the study over the course of the intervention. However, 25 children left their CCC between pre- and post-intervention, representing a 7% attrition rate. These children were replaced by 33 newcomers (14 in the control condition and 19 in the intervention condition). If the new children entered their CCC in the first half of the trial (i.e., week 16 out of 32), they were included in the post-intervention assessment and in further analysis, after first obtaining parental consent. Children who entered the CCC after the 16th week of the intervention were not invited to participate in the study. In attrition analyses, we compared the 25 children who left the study with the 33 children who entered after the pre-intervention assessment (i.e., newcomers) and the 303 children who entered at pre-intervention and remained in the study. More children left the intervention condition than the control condition, but newcomers were equally distributed in both experimental conditions. There were no statistically significant differences between the children enrolled at baseline, those who left the study and those who entered later, in terms of sex, age and number of siblings. However, children who entered the intervention group later were more likely to come from middle-high SES families while children who entered the wait list group were more likely to come from low-SES families. We therefore controlled for family SES in all analyses.

Are there differences between experimental conditions at pre-intervention on children’s disruptive and prosocial behaviors?

We used hierarchical linear mixed models to examine differences in disruptive and prosocial behaviors between children in the intervention and control conditions at pre-intervention. No differences were found with respect to pre-intervention disruptive and prosocial behaviors (see Supplementary material Table S 2 ). However, girls in the intervention group exhibited significantly higher levels of prosocial behaviors compared to girls in the control group and compared to boys from both the intervention group and the control group, respectively ( β intervention by sex  = 1.61, p <  0.01). We therefore controlled for pre-intervention levels of children’s prosocial behaviors in post-intervention models, in addition to assessing a potential moderating effect of children’s sex. For disruptive behavior, we did not find any significant interaction between the experimental condition and children’s sex, and consequently did not control for pre-intervention levels of disruptive behaviors in subsequent models.

Main analysis

Hierarchical linear mixed models were used to estimate the main effects of the intervention on post-intervention disruptive and prosocial behaviors and to estimate if the impact of the intervention varied according to children’s sex and family SES. To account for variation in the number of children across CCCs, we used the restricted maximum likelihood estimator in every model. The analysis was performed in five steps.

First, because randomization was performed at the CCC level, we had to account for clustering in our data and we therefore ran an unconditional model to estimate the intra-class correlation (ICC) between clusters. The ICC is the proportion of variance in the outcome variable that is explained by the grouping structure of the hierarchical model [ 38 ]. It reports the amount of variation unexplained by any predictors in the model that can be attributed to the grouping variable, compared to the overall unexplained variance [ 38 ]. In the unconditional model, only the intercept was introduced as a fixed effect.

Second, we introduced the experimental condition variable as a main fixed predictor with and without the family SES covariate. Since the CCCs are the unit of randomization in this study, we expected variation between and within clusters and therefore accounted for this by introducing random effects. In other words, because children’s sex and family SES could vary within the same cluster, i.e., children from different SES backgrounds attended the same CCC, we introduced them as fixed and random effects for the adjusted and interaction models.

In subsequent models, we added an interaction term between our hypothesized moderators (i.e., children’s sex and family SES) and the experimental condition variable in the prediction of children’s disruptive and prosocial behaviors. Once again, the random effects specified in these models were the intercept, as well as family SES and children’s sex. Because of baseline differences between the experimental conditions found in preliminary analysis, we also added children’s pre-intervention prosocial behavior score as a fixed and random effect when assessing the moderating effect of children’s sex on the association between the experimental condition and post-intervention prosocial behavior.

Fourth, we performed pairwise comparisons between the intervention and the control group according to children’s sex and family SES, based on the mixed hierarchical model mean estimates. Finally, we estimated the effect sizes of the difference in means using the f2 fixed effect size estimation [ 39 ] for hierarchical linear mixed models recommended by Lorah (2018) [ 40 ]. The f2 effect size statistic represents the proportion of variance explained by the given fixed effects relative to the unexplained proportion of outcome variance. Effects of 0.02, 0.15 and 0.35 are considered small, medium and large respectively [ 41 ].

Descriptive statistics

Participants.

Children ( n  = 361) were distributed into 19 different CCCs. Table 1 shows that most children attended CCC for 30 to 40 h per week and that the number of boys and girls in the intervention group and the control group was roughly equal. Table  2 shows children’s raw scores for disruptive and prosocial behaviors at pre- and post-intervention according to the experimental conditions.

Implementation of Minipally

All educators were female, and most (85%) had a professional early education training. All educators in the intervention group received the two-day Minipally training. Implementation was monitored throughout the year via four half-day supervision sessions. At the last supervision session (week 24 out of 32 in the trial), all educators in the intervention group had implemented 12 of the 16 Minipally workshops. Thereafter, the exact number of workshops conducted by every educator was not monitored.

Did the intervention have an impact on children’s social skills?

Disruptive behaviors.

At post-intervention, the unconditional model showed that about 9% of the total variation in post-intervention disruptive behaviors was accounted for by differences between CCCs. When entering the experimental condition variable as a fixed effect, while adjusting for children’s family SES ( β  = 0.27, p =  0.52), we found no main effect of the intervention on children’s post-intervention disruptive behaviors ( β  = 0.39, p =  0.34). This suggested that the mean level of post-intervention disruptive behaviors was not different between the intervention and the control group. The ICC for this model dropped to 0.05, indicating that we accounted for a larger portion of the variation among the different CCCs and that less variation existed in the random intercepts of our model. Coefficients for the post-intervention models and their associated ICCs are presented in Table  3 .

Did child’s sex or the socio-economic status of the family moderate the impact of the intervention?

We found a significant interaction between experimental conditions and children’s sex ( β  = − 1.19, p =  0.04, Fig.  2 a), indicating lower levels of post-intervention disruptive behaviors in the intervention group compared to the control group for girls ( F =  4.19, df =  43.08 , p =  0.04; f2 effect size = −  0.15). For boys, there was no difference in post-intervention disruptive behaviors between the intervention group and the control group ( F =  0.37, df =  49.20, p  = 0.55; f2 effect size =  0.04).

Children’s Levels of Disruptive ( a ) and Prosocial ( b ) Behavior in Post-intervention. Note 1 . Mean score and 95% confidence intervals on children’s levels of disruptive ( a ) and prosocial ( b ) behavior in post-intervention according to intervention conditions and children’s sex. Note 2. Models adjusted for children’s family socio-economic status

We also investigated the potential moderating effect of family SES, but no significant interaction was found ( β  = 0.17, p =  0.86; f2 effect size for middle-high SES children < 0.01, f2 effect size low SES  <  0.01).

Prosocial behaviors

For prosocial behaviors, there was no main effect of the intervention and no moderation effect of children’s sex or family SES. Coefficients and ICCs for all tested models are presented in Table 3 . Figure  2 b shows the prosocial scores according to experimental conditions and children’s sex.

Sensitivity analysis

We performed the same set of analyses with a restricted sample of children who had both pre- and post-intervention assessments (i.e., newcomers were excluded from the sensitivity analysis). We found the same patterns of results, namely that the intervention led to a decrease in disruptive behaviors among girls only but had no impact on prosocial behaviors for girls or boys.

This study used a cluster-randomized controlled trial design to test the impact of a social skills training program on children’s social behaviors in Child Care Centers in low-SES neighborhoods. Using hierarchical linear mixed models, we found that the sex of the child moderated the impact of the social skills training program, reducing the level of disruptive behaviors for girls but not for boys. The failure to find an effect for prosocial behaviors may be due to the high levels of prosocial behaviors in the experimental conditions at pre-intervention, leaving little room for improvement (i.e., ceiling effects). Furthermore, we found no evidence that the SES of the child’s family moderated the impact of the intervention.

Examination of the evaluated intervention

With respect to disruptive behaviors, our results are consistent with earlier findings from a similar social skills intervention developed by our research team for school-aged children– the “Fluppy program” [ 42 ] – which found that disruptive behaviors at the end of the 8-month intervention were reduced for girls but not for boys [ 42 ]. One explanation for the observed sex differences is the highly verbal nature of these interventions. Sex differences in children’s verbal abilities are well-documented, particularly early in development [ 43 , 44 ], so it is possible that the content and delivery of the interventions were not sufficiently accessible to boys. Indeed, the Minipally and Fluppy programs are specifically designed to improve social skills that frequently depend on verbal skills such as the ability to articulate questions or describe emotions.

Thus, while girls might be receptive to educator-led workshops that focus on enhancing social skills and reducing disruptive behaviors, this might not be the best approach for boys, who might instead benefit from educator-led dramatic play sessions, stronger educator-child relationships, and supervised peer play to scaffold social competences [ 23 , 45 , 46 ]. More broadly, our results corroborate the hypothesis that children’s sex is an important moderator of the impact of a social skills training program during early childhood and possibly later.

A further consideration for future studies is that adding a parenting component to the Minipally program could increase its impact. According to a recent meta-analysis, interventions with a parent component, either alone or in combination with other components, are more likely to benefit children who exhibit high levels of behavioral problems [ 47 ]. Future studies should therefore examine the unique and combined impact of child care-based and parenting-based interventions on children’s social behaviors when designing new interventions and early childhood politics.

Finally, previous work shows that social skills training programs for childhood disruptive behaviors are effective only if they are of moderate-to-high intensity [ 47 ]. It is possible that our intervention lacked the intensity necessary to significantly increase children’s prosocial behaviors and reduce disruptive behaviors in boys. The educators in our trial conducted at least 12 out of 16 workshops in the Minipally child curriculum, but their reinvestment activities (i.e., follow-up activities throughout the week) were not monitored. A higher intensity intervention with systematic reinvestment activities would arguably have had a greater impact on children’s social skills, especially for those exposed to risk factors in their home environment.

Strengths and limitations

The strengths of this study are its cluster-randomized experimental design, low level of cluster (0%) and individual attrition (7%), and the use of hierarchical linear mixed models, which accounted for the nested structure of randomization. The study had good ecological validity. It was implemented in community-based CCCs by educators who, apart from receiving a 2-day training and 12 h of supervision for the social skills program, had only a two-year professional degree (after high school) in early childhood and child care education.

The study has several limitations. First, we underestimated the ICC of the data in our sample size calculation, which, when combined with our modest sample size, limited our capacity to detect small effects. Future studies should replicate the intervention using larger samples and test a putative interaction with children’s sex and family SES, as well as other potential moderators, such as children’s baseline levels of prosocial and disruptive behaviors. Second, children’s behavioral questionnaires were completed by the educator who also delivered the Minipally program. Childcare educators are a reliable source of information on disruptive behaviors because of their established ability to distinguish between normative and atypical behaviors[ 48 , 49 ]; However, since the educators were involved in both the implementation of the intervention and the pre- and post-intervention behavioral assessments, this may have introduced a bias. For instance, due to their proximity to the project, educators in the intervention group may have noticed smaller improvement in children’s behaviors than educators in the control group. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that such bias would explain the different impact of the intervention on disruptive behaviors between boys and girls. The decision to rely on the CCC educators who participated in the study was based on extensive literature that shows there is only weak to moderate agreement in social skills evaluations between raters [ 50 ]. Social skills are highly context specific, and the skills necessary to function at home are considerably different from those required in group contexts typical of CCC settings [ 50 ]. Future studies seeking to replicate our intervention should consider evaluating children’s social competences based on assessments performed by independent raters. The use of objective tests – for example “The white crayon does not work …” task by Ostrov et al. [ 51 ] in which children are asked to participate in a group drawing exercise – should be considered in future studies to examine the impact of a social skills training program on children’s social behaviors. Also, a follow-up assessment at school entry with kindergarten teachers who have not been involved in the project may yield more reliable results. Finally, we did not track the number of workshops implemented by child care educators – we only know that all educators performed 12 or more of the 16 workshops during the implementation year. Future studies should include a comprehensive implementation and content validity evaluation.

CCCs provide one of the earliest opportunities to equip children with social skills that will benefit them for the rest of their lives [ 52 ]. This study adds to a small but growing body of literature suggesting there may be important sex differences in children’s responsiveness to early psychosocial interventions. Preschool programs that provide social skills training with higher intensity, a defined educative curriculum, and parent engagement may help reduce behavior problems and enhance social skills with long-term benefits to individuals and society.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not expected to be available in accordance with the ethical approval received from the Ethical Research Committee: CHU Saint-Justine for confidentiality reasons.

Abbreviations

Child care centers

Intra-class correlation

Preschool life skills

Socio-economic status

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the participants who have given their time to take part in this study. IOM holds a Canada Research Chair in the Developmental Origins of Vulnerability and Resilience. MPL is supported by a Fonds de Recherche Québécois en Santé (FRQS) doctoral fellowship. FV is supported by a FRQS post-doctoral fellowship.

This study was supported by grants from the Quebec Research Fund for Society and Culture (2015-RG-178735), Canadian Institutes of Health Research (MOP: 114984), and CHU Sainte-Justine philanthropic donation (#6483). The funding agencies had no role in the design of the study, its execution, analyses, and the interpretation of data.

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Marie-Pier Larose, Isabelle Ouellet-Morin, Francis Vergunst, Frank Vitaro, Alain Girard, Richard E. Tremblay & Sylvana M. Côté

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The Research Unit on Children’s Psychosocial Maladjustment (GRIP) provided data collection and management. SMC, MPL, IOM, FV, RET, and MB conceived and designed the study. MPL, IOM and AG analyzed and interpreted the data. SMC, MPL, FV and IOM drafted the manuscript. FV, FV RET, AG, and MB reviewed the manuscript and had a major contribution in editing the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript after revising it critically for important intellectual content. All authors agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The Sainte-Justine Hospital Ethical Research Committee approved all procedures in May 2013 ref.: 2014–565, 3738 and renewed the ethic approval every year since then. Written consent to participate in the study were obtained from parents, educators and directors of the child care centers.

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Additional file 1: table s1..

Skills taught in the Minipally program by workshops.

Additional file 2: Table S2.

Linear Mixed Models Linking Intervention Conditions to Disruptive and Prosocial Behaviors in Pre-intervention.

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Larose, MP., Ouellet-Morin, I., Vergunst, F. et al. Examining the impact of a social skills training program on preschoolers’ social behaviors: a cluster-randomized controlled trial in child care centers. BMC Psychol 8 , 39 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-020-00408-2

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Handbook of Intellectual Disabilities pp 685–697 Cite as

Social Skills

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Part of the book series: Autism and Child Psychopathology Series ((ACPS))

Social skill excesses and deficits are a defining aspect of intellectual disabilities. Intervention targeting improving areas of deficit and decreasing excesses can aid in normalization and improve quality of life. This chapter reviews definitions of social skills both in general and in the context of intellectual disabilities. It further breaks down social skills into seven specific domains, communication, cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy, engagement, and self-control, and discusses the importance of each. A number of approaches to social skills training are also discussed with specific emphasis placed on interventions for individuals with intellectual disabilities. Interventions range from discrete trials training which has been used to teach specific social behaviors to individuals with more severe intellectual disabilities to role-playing and video self-modeling which can be valuable treatment approaches for those with a higher level of functioning. Regardless of the approach used for social skills training, the importance of incorporating procedures to increase the likelihood of generalization and maintenance of the learned behavior is emphasized.

Social skill excesses and deficits are a defining aspect of intellectual disabilities. Intervention targeting improving areas of deficit and decreasing excesses can aid in normalization and improve quality of life. Researchers and clinicians recognize these issues and have developed an extensive literature on the treatment of these problems. Specific social behaviors which have been taught will be defined. In addition to treatment methods that have been developed to improve individuals’ social skills, this chapter will review and critique definitions of social skills and how they aid in our understanding of the behavioral manifestation of intellectual disability (ID).

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Little, S.G., Akin-Little, A., Gopaul, M., Nicholson, T. (2019). Social Skills. In: Matson, J.L. (eds) Handbook of Intellectual Disabilities. Autism and Child Psychopathology Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20843-1_37

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Employers increasingly reward workers who have both social and technical skills, rather than technical skills alone, according to a new analysis by a Harvard education economist.

Research by David Deming , a professor of education and economics at the Graduate School of Education and a professor of education and public policy at the Kennedy School, shows that workers who combine social and technical skills fare best in the modern economy, as measured by a 7.2 percentage point increase in available jobs and a 26 percent wage increase between 1980 and 2012.

Those in technical jobs that have few requirements for social skills, such as specialists in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields, actually saw the number of jobs decline 3.3 percentage points. While wages for those jobs rose over the study period, the increase was roughly a quarter of that seen in jobs requiring both technical and social skills.

Automation and computerization, which first affected repetitive, low-skilled industrial work, are penetrating fields that, though perhaps more cognitively demanding, also have elements that are routine and somewhat repetitive, Deming said.

“Jobs where you just sit in a cubicle or on the factory floor and work in isolation are going to disappear,” he said. “In the long run of history, jobs that get replaced are drudgery. In the long run, we will be better off.”

The study’s good news, Deming said, is that people can still thrive in an area where computers come up woefully short: interacting with other people. Specifically, today’s job market favors those who have the skills to be good team players.

“Social skills reduce the cost of coordinating with others,” Deming said. “Each time there’s a new set of people, they have to figure out anew what their roles are.”

Deming’s paper, to be published next month in the Quarterly Journal of Economics , lists nursing, teaching, therapy, medicine, and law — all fields that require significant interpersonal interaction — among the occupations growing fastest as a share of the labor market. Engineering and architecture are among the occupations whose workplace share has shrunk.

The results partly reflect how the nature of certain fields is changing, Deming noted. Engineers and computer programmers are still needed, but positions in which they might do the bulk of their work alone in a cubicle are giving way to more team-based, project-based approaches, Deming said.

“I don’t think STEM jobs are going to disappear,” he said. “Technological change is disrupting the nature of existing jobs.”

The study grew out of Deming’s sense that employers’ desire for strong social skills in new hires was being ignored. For years, employer surveys have listed the ability to communicate well and work as part of a team among important skills for new hires. Nonetheless, economists and educators have continued to emphasize hard skills.

“We don’t have a way of measuring how some people work on teams,” Deming said. “We don’t have a formal way of thinking about that.”

Deming took a step toward a providing one by developing a mathematical model in which group members trade tasks among themselves to optimize use of their particular skills, which in turn makes the group more efficient. He then applied the model to national employment data sets, which allowed him to quantify the dependence of particular jobs on social skills and see how those jobs changed over time.

The results, according to his paper, reinforce prior research showing that skilled jobs are becoming less routine, perhaps because machines are taking over routine work.

The findings have implications for U.S. schools, Deming said. To the extent that teachers prepare students for the job market, the study indicates that team-based project work should be a point of emphasis.

“If you want schools to train people for the workplace, you have to simulate the situation they encounter in the workplace,” he said.

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6 Common Leadership Styles — and How to Decide Which to Use When

• Rebecca Knight

Being a great leader means recognizing that different circumstances call for different approaches.

Research suggests that the most effective leaders adapt their style to different circumstances — be it a change in setting, a shift in organizational dynamics, or a turn in the business cycle. But what if you feel like you’re not equipped to take on a new and different leadership style — let alone more than one? In this article, the author outlines the six leadership styles Daniel Goleman first introduced in his 2000 HBR article, “Leadership That Gets Results,” and explains when to use each one. The good news is that personality is not destiny. Even if you’re naturally introverted or you tend to be driven by data and analysis rather than emotion, you can still learn how to adapt different leadership styles to organize, motivate, and direct your team.

Much has been written about common leadership styles and how to identify the right style for you, whether it’s transactional or transformational, bureaucratic or laissez-faire. But according to Daniel Goleman, a psychologist best known for his work on emotional intelligence, “Being a great leader means recognizing that different circumstances may call for different approaches.”

• RK Rebecca Knight is a journalist who writes about all things related to the changing nature of careers and the workplace. Her essays and reported stories have been featured in The Boston Globe, Business Insider, The New York Times, BBC, and The Christian Science Monitor. She was shortlisted as a Reuters Institute Fellow at Oxford University in 2023. Earlier in her career, she spent a decade as an editor and reporter at the Financial Times in New York, London, and Boston.

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Plastic fantastic or nature-based playgrounds: Which is best for children’s development?

22 April 2024

Researchers at the University of South Australia have been exploring just this, finding that while both spaces have benefits, children prefer playing in places with nature play features such as trees, sand, and plants, rather than areas with typical play equipment such as slides and swings.

Observing 3-5-year-old children in early childhood centres, researchers found that children were significantly more imaginative and social in nature play areas, tending to play together more and be more creative.  While in manufactured spaces, children were mostly involved in physical activities like climbing and playing on equipment.

Specifically, the study found that children spent most of their time (about 60%) in natural play zones, as compared to manufactured play areas (about 40%).

With early childhood (particularly years 0-5) known for being critical to a child’s development , it’s important that we understand how children achieve optimal cognitive, social, and physical skills.

In Australia, one in five children are developmentally vulnerable on one of five domains : language and cognition, communication, emotional maturity, social competence and physical health and wellbeing.

Lead researcher and PhD candidate Kylie Dankiw says that embracing elements of nature in playground design could present greater opportunities for improved children’s development.

“Nature play is globally recognised for the benefits it provides to young children, particularly in relation to developing cognitive and social skills, but also because it allows children to challenge themselves, take risks, explore and create,” Dankiw says.

“So, it makes sense that there is a relationship between the features and components of an outdoor play space and the impacts on a child’s development.

“In this study, we wanted to test this theory, by observing how and where children play and their different play behaviours.

“We found that most children tended to play more in nature zones, where they could explore and engage with nature, making mud pies, climbing trees, and exploring creek beds. Here, they tended to be more social, creative, and imaginative.

“Yet, children also liked playing on manufactured equipment where we watched them climb, swing or slide. And while they spend less time in these spaces, they did help the children build up physical and motor skills.

“What this shows is that nature play zones and manufactured play spaces both influence children’s play in a positive way.”

Co-researcher, UniSA’s Dr Margarita Tsiros , says the results of this study should interest landscape designers, teachers, parents, health professionals and child development experts to work together to make play spaces that help children grow and learn in different ways.

“Nature play spaces may be a sustainable and beneficial way to engage children with the natural environment,” Dr Tsiros says.

“When designing or upgrading a play space for young children, it’s important to include a range of natural elements that are physically challenging (such as logs for balancing or climbing over), imaginative (such as loose parts to make mud pies), and that children can explore with their friends, (such as places to build cubbies and trade sticks).

“Traditional play equipment still has a role, but a mix of both may deliver engaging experiences and beneficial outcomes that promote children's development.

“If we can create play spaces that not only provide enjoyment but also contribute positively to children's learning, growth, and development then this is the ultimate goal.”

Notes for editors:

Nature play is a widely used term developed to describe children’s play that takes place in a natural environment and/or involves interaction with natural elements and features, such as water and mud, rocks, hills, forests, and natural loose parts, such as sticks, pinecones, leaves, and grass.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Media contact: Annabel Mansfield M: +61 479 182 489 E: [email protected]

Researcher : Kylie Dankiw E : [email protected]

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• Later this year Meta will launch a new education product for Quest devices.
• It will allow teachers, trainers and administrators to access a range of education-specific apps and features, and make it possible for them to manage multiple Quest devices at once.
• The new product is the result of extensive consultation and collaboration with educators, researchers and third-party developers working in the education space around the world.

Of all the ways in which metaverse technologies like virtual, mixed and augmented reality could prove to be transformative, the potential they have for education is one of the most exciting.  

For most of us, learning is social – we learn from and with others, and from each other’s experiences. It’s about interaction and discussion as much as it is about absorbing facts. That’s why the unique feeling of presence and immersion these technologies create can be so impactful in education.

They also make things possible that are impossible in the physical world. Instead of telling students what the dinosaurs were like, they can walk among them. Virtual science laboratories can be built and filled with equipment that most schools would never be able to afford. Classes can go on field trips to the best museums, no matter how far away they are. And they can be used to take the risk out of otherwise dangerous or expensive technical or vocational training.

Last year, I wrote about some of the ingenious ways teachers and trainers were already using these technologies . That momentum has continued to build, with more and more colleges and institutions incorporating them into their curriculums. For example:

• New Mexico State University is teaching criminal justice by immersing students in virtual crime scenes to learn how to best investigate.
• Stanford University is using virtual reality to teach its Business School students soft skills, like how to have a difficult conversation or how to nail an interview.
• The University of Glasgow is teaching life sciences by placing students inside virtual intestines, to see how the body battles bacteria.

There is also a growing research base showing that learning in VR can improve students’ performance, as well as their levels of engagement, attendance and satisfaction. In 2022, Morehouse College reported that students who learned in VR had an average final test score of 85, versus 78 in person. A survey by the XR Association found that 77% of educators believe these technologies ignite curiosity and improve engagement in class.

To make it easier for educators, later this year Meta will be launching a new product offering for Quest devices dedicated to education, just as last year’s Meta Quest for Business was designed for the workplace. It will allow teachers, trainers and administrators to access a range of education-specific apps and features, and make it possible for them to manage multiple Quest devices at once, without the need for each device in a classroom or training environment to be updated and prepared individually. This will save teachers time and allow students to pick up the headsets and get started right away – something that educators using our devices have consistently told us they want.

Education and training providers represent a considerable market for technology products, and we see a growing number of developers building and releasing apps aimed at this sector. While it is still early days for the use of immersive technologies in these settings, we think there’s scope for them to be adopted on a much wider scale. 

The product’s name and features will be announced in the coming months. At launch, we plan to make the product available in our Quest for Business supported markets to institutions serving learners aged 13+.

The new product is the result of extensive consultation and collaboration with educators, researchers and third-party developers working in the education space around the world. We want it to be something that makes it easier for students to learn, apply and practice new skills; feel a sense of presence with teachers and classmates; and to visit places or experience things that would otherwise be impossible. Above all, we want it to help teachers do what they do best: teach. We will continue to learn from them so we can keep improving and make sure Meta Quest headsets are the best devices, at the best value, to bring their classes to life.

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Metaverse technologies are creating new opportunities for teachers to inspire students, related pages.

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Social Skills in Children at Home and in Preschool

Maryam maleki.

1 School of Nursing and Midwifery, Shahroud University of Medical Sciences, Shahroud 3614773955, Iran

Abbas Mardani

Minoo mitra chehrzad.

2 Department of Pediatric Nursing, School of Nursing and Midwifery, Guilan University of Medical Sciences, Rasht 4199613776, Iran

Mostafa Dianatinasab

3 Department of Epidemiology, Center for Health Related Social and Behavioral Sciences Research, Shahroud University of Medical Sciences, Shahroud 3614773955, Iran

Mojtaba Vaismoradi

4 Faculty of Nursing and Health Sciences, Nord University, Bodø 8049, Norway

Preschool age is a crucial period for social development. Social skills acquired during this period are the basis for future life’s success. This study aimed to investigate the level of social skills in preschool children at home and in preschool and to examine the association between children’s social skills and environmental and cultural backgrounds. A cross-sectional study using a multistage cluster sampling method was conducted on 546 children studying in the preschool centers of an urban area of Iran. Data were collected through demographic and social skill questionnaires from parents and teachers. Our findings showed that the social skills of girls were more than those of boys at home. Further, the majority of children had a moderate level of social skills from the parents’ and teachers’ perspectives. There was a modest parent–teacher agreement in most domains of social skills. Moreover, a statistically significant association was reported between children’s social skill domains and the child’s birth rank, father’s age, father’s job, teacher’s age, teacher’s education, teacher’s experience, and preschool classroom in terms of the numbers of children and the type of classroom. Accordingly, the risk of problems with social skills was reported to be relatively low. Therefore, more attention should be given to the family status and the teacher’s and preschool center’s characteristics to improve social skills in children.

1. Introduction

Healthy children create the future of any society [ 1 ]. Therefore, there is a need to pay attention to their health development process and mental health [ 2 ]. Acquiring social skills is a fundamental part of mental health [ 3 ]. Social skills are learned behaviors based on social rules and enable individuals to interact appropriately with others in society [ 4 ]. Further, based on another definition, social skills are defined as a component of social competence and a general measure of the quality of social behavior [ 5 ]. Social skills enable human beings to develop social relationships in various life stages [ 6 ].

Social skills enable social adaptation, create and maintain existing social relationships, and have long- and short-term effects over an individual’s life [ 7 ]. Therefore, preschool age is a crucial period for the development of social skills among children [ 8 ]. Therefore, the development of social skills enables children to create successful relationships with others, helps with school readiness, and improves adaptation to the formal school setting as well as academic performance [ 4 , 9 ]. A lack of social skills in children leads to feelings of loneliness, subsequent mental and behavior problems, poor interactions with their parents, teachers, and peers, and school maladjustment [ 10 , 11 , 12 ]. Therefore, it is required to investigate preschool children’s social skills and identify social deficiencies to design interventions aiming at the improvement of their social skills and quality of life, and adaptation to the environment at early ages. The assessment of social skills is performed through the measurement of cooperation, assertion, and self-control [ 13 ].

Preschool and home are important life settings that play an essential role in the development of children’s social abilities [ 14 ], and parents and teachers have important roles [ 15 ]. The development of social skills initially is started at home at interpersonal levels through interactions with parents [ 15 ]. Next, children enter preschool as the first social environment and continue the process of socialization [ 2 , 16 ]. Since children spend most of their time with teachers during preschool [ 17 , 18 ], teachers perform caregiving functions similar to those of parents in terms of preserving their safety, relieving their stress, and educating them in cases of misbehaviors [ 19 ]. Children practice social skills within teacher–child interactions [ 20 ] and use them in subsequent interactions at home with parents [ 21 ]. Similarly, children apply social skills acquired at home in subsequent interactions with teachers and peers at school [ 20 ]. Accordingly, teachers and parents are considered influential forces in the development of children’s life skills [ 22 , 23 ] and are in the best position for the provision of a reliable evaluation of children’s social skills [ 24 ]. Teachers interact with children in different various situations, in which various social skills are needed [ 17 , 24 ]. Teachers are able to observe a variety of social behaviors in children, which parents usually lack the required experiences to perform. On the other hand, parents’ knowledge of children’s behaviors goes beyond the classroom setting [ 25 ]. Therefore, a comprehensive evaluation of children’s social skills needs the assessment and comparison of both parents’ and teachers’ perspectives [ 18 ]. In addition to parents’ and teachers’ characteristics, the family socioeconomic status, home, and school environment influence the evaluation of social skills in children [ 11 , 16 , 26 ].

The development of social skills starts at an early age and is different between males and females [ 22 ]. For example, in girls, it is faster than boys [ 5 , 27 , 28 ], but Iranian studies have found no relationships between gender differences and the development of social skills [ 29 , 30 ]. In addition, the cultural background influences the display of social skills in different social environments [ 31 ]. The socialization process in non-Western contexts happens through adherence to the expectations of parents and the society, but in industrialized societies, authoritarian status has a lower effect on the parent–child relationship [ 32 ]. Nevertheless, a few studies have examined social skills in Iran. Therefore, there is a need to assess gender differences in relation to social skills in various cultural backgrounds.

In the preschool period, 3–6-years-old Iranian children enter kindergartens and preschool centers [ 33 ]. This one-year period is optional, and children at the age of six years would be able to enter the elementary school [ 34 ]. Despite the growing importance of social skills of preschool children, little is known around social skills in different settings and the association between social skills and cultural backgrounds in the Iranian context. Therefore, this study was conducted to improve our understandings of social skills in preschool children, identify differences between girls and boys in terms of social skills, find the parent–teacher agreement of social skills in preschool children at home and in preschool, and examine the association between social skills and the environmental and cultural backgrounds in the Iranian context.

2.1. Design and Participants

This cross-sectional study was conducted on preschool children at preschool centers in an urban area of Iran from 2015 to 2016. They were selected based on the inclusion criteria of an age of six years (born from 23 September 2009 to 23 September 2010), living in the city of Rasht, acquaintance between the child with the teacher for at least 3 months, and the preschool center being under the supervision of Rasht Ministry of Education (regions 1 and 2) and the Welfare Organization. Known physical and mental health problems, and living with one parent or another caregiver were considered exclusion criteria.

The results of the study by Sheikhzakaryaie et al. on children at preschools in the city of Tehran were used to estimate the sample size [ 30 ]. Other variables for this estimation were the standard deviation of 19 for the social skill scales of preschool children, 95% confidence level, and assuming that the accuracy of estimating the mean score of children’s social skills was at least 2. Therefore, using a statistical formula and the cluster model design (design effect = 1.5), the sample size was estimated to be 525 people as follows:

For two-stage random cluster sampling, data regarding the number of preschool age children at each preschool center were collected. The number of preschool age children was classified on the basis of preschool centers supervised by the Ministry of Education regions 1, 2, and the Welfare Organization. They consisted of boys’, girls’, and coeducational preschool centers of the public, both private and nonprofit type. The number of children in each preschool center was divided into their total population and multiplied by the sample size (n = 525). Further, the number of children from public, private, and nonprofit preschool centers was calculated, and then it was divided into the average number of children in each classroom to calculate the number of classes (n = 28). The preschool centers were selected using a random method, and from each center, one classroom was chosen randomly to recruit the samples ( Figure 1 ).

Process of sampling in this study.

2.2. Measurement

The demographic data and the social skills rating system (SSRS) questionnaires were used for data collection.

2.2.1. Sociodemographic Data Questionnaire

Three questionnaires were designed by the researchers through a review of literature to examine the sociodemographic variables of children. The validity of these questionnaires was confirmed using face and content validity methods. They included the child’s demographic questionnaire consisting of questions about the child’s gender, birth rank, number of children in the family, going to the kindergarten, and presence of physical and mental health issues. Further, the child’s family questionnaire included questions about parents living with a spouse, parent’s age, parent’s education level, parent’s job, and family income. The teacher’s demographic questionnaire included questions about the teacher’s age, education level, and teaching experience, number of children in each classroom, type of classroom (single-sex, coeducational), and characteristics of the preschool center type.

2.2.2. Social Skills Questionnaire

The social skills rating system (SSRS) was used to investigate social skills in preschool children from the parents’ and teachers’ perspectives. The SSRS is a comprehensive and psychometrically tested tool for evaluating social skills among preschool children [ 35 ]. The social skills rating system–teacher (SSRS–T) was evaluated in terms of internal consistency (r = 0.93–0.94). The test–retest coefficient within the four-week interval was reported to be 0.85. For the social skills rating system–parent (SSRS–P), internal consistency was reported 0.87–0.90, and the reliability coefficient of test–retest within a four-week interval was 0.87 [ 13 ]. Shahim in Iran reported the internal consistency of the SSRS–T and SSRS–P to be 0.71 and 0.88, respectively. In addition, the test–retest reliability coefficients within a 4–5-week interval for the SSRS–T and the SSRS–P were 0.71 and 0.70, respectively [ 36 ].

The SSRS is a 3-point Likert scale (0 = Never, 1 = Sometimes, and 2 = Very often). The SSRS–T is a standardized 30-item questionnaire consisting of three subscales of ‘cooperation’, ‘assertion’, and ‘self-control’. The cooperation domain includes 19 questions with a score range from 0 to 38, the assertion domain includes 8 questions with a score range between 0 and 16, and the self-control domain includes 3 questions with a score range from 0 to 6. Furthermore, the total score of social skills in the SSRS–T is calculated through summing up all subscale scores with a range of scores from 0 to 60. The SSRS–P is a standardized 39-item question with three subscales of ‘cooperation’ (19 questions with a score range from 0 to 38), ‘assertion’ (16 questions with a score range from 0 to 32), and ‘self-control’ (4 questions with a score range from 0 to 8). Further, the total social skill score of the SSRS–P is calculated through summing up all subscale scores with a range of scores from 0 to 78 [ 37 , 38 ]. For both the parent’s and teacher’s forms, the SSRS manual provides cutoff points to categorize children scores in each subscale and the total social skill score into three categories of low, moderate, or high. Scores within one standard deviation of the mean indicate the moderate level. Scores with one standard deviation below or above the mean category fall into the low or high levels, respectively [ 13 , 39 ].

2.3. Data Collection

Out of 255 preschool centers, 28 preschool centers were randomly selected ( Figure 1 ), and from each center, only one classroom was chosen randomly. Data were collected within the school from December 2015 to January of 2016. The children’s names were coded, and the teachers were asked to fill out the teachers’ demographic and the SSRS–T questionnaires. In addition, the children’s parents were requested to complete the child’s family and SSRS–P questionnaires during their referral to the preschool centers. Given the probability of sample’s attrition, 598 questionnaires were completed by the samples.

2.4. Ethical Consideration

The Social Determinants of Health Research Center at Guilan University of Medical Sciences approved the study protocol under the code of IR.GUMS.REC.1394.52. Prior to the study, the permission to enter the study was obtained. The samples were informed of the study aim and process and were ensured of confidentiality of data. Those who were willing to take part in the study signed the informed consent form.

2.5. Data Analysis

Descriptive and inferential statistics were used via the SPSS v. 25 software (IBM, Armonk, NY, USA). Regarding the normal distribution of data, mean and standard deviation of social skill scores were calculated for cooperation, assertion, self-control, and the total social skills from the teachers’ and parents’ perspectives. To examine gender differences in social skill subscales in preschool and at home separately, the independent samples t-test was used based on the teacher’s ( α < 0.05) and patent’s (α < 0.05) ratings. Given the categorization of the social skills level, the social skill subscales and total social skills of children were categorized into three categories (low, moderate, and high levels) for parents’ and teachers’ ratings separately. Afterwards, the Chi-square test was used to compare the percentages of social skill subscales between the teachers’ and parents’ ratings (α < 0.05). In addition, correlation analysis using the Pearson test was performed to examine the parent–teacher agreement ratings (α < 0.05). Moreover, the STATA software (Version 15, Stata Corporation, and College Station, TX, USA) was used to perform multivariable linear regression and investigate the association between sociodemographic variables (variables listed in Table 1 ) and social skill domains based on the parents’ and teachers’ ratings (α < 0.05).

The participants’ characteristics according to demographic and social features.

Due to missing data (n = 17) and noncompliance with exclusion criteria (n = 35), 52 questionnaires were excluded from the data analysis and reporting. According to Table 1 , the sociodemographic characteristics of the participants were categorized into three groups of child-related, child familial-related, and teacher- and preschool center-related variables. Most children were boys (57.9%), single children (52.2%), and the first child in the family (65.6%). Moreover, some children (45.6%) had a history of going to the kindergarten. Furthermore, 57.3% of the children’s mothers and fathers were 30–40 years old. The mothers (46.1%) had a high school education level, but the fathers (38.7%) had an academic education level. In addition, 74.4% of the mothers and 60% of the fathers were housekeepers and self-employed, respectively. Furthermore, the majority of the children (49.6%) had families with an income of $150–300 per month. The teachers were 30–40 years old (71.6%), had a bachelor education level (89.4%), and had above 10 years of teaching experience (46.7%). The children were studying at classes with 11–20 children in each classroom (42.7%), in single-sex classes (57.5%), in preschool centers under the supervision of the Ministry of Education region 1 (37%), and public schools (57.5%).

The social skills of the preschool children at home and in preschool based on gender differences and the teachers’ and parents’ ratings are shown in Table 2 . From the teachers’ perspectives, boys achieved higher scores in the assertion domain than girls ( p = 0.02) in preschool. However, from the parents’ perspectives, girls had higher scores in cooperation ( p = 0.03), self-control ( p = 0.001), and total social skill domains ( p = 0.01) than boys at home.

Gender differences in social skills from the teachers’ and parents’ perspectives.

* Independent samples t-test; Df : degree of freedom.

Table 3 shows the number and percentage of social skills in preschool children in three levels of low, moderate, and high from the teachers’ ratings in preschool and the parents’ ratings at home. From both perspectives, preschool children had a moderate level of all subscales of social skills and total social skills. The percentage of total social skills of children was 67.4% and 67.6% in the teachers’ and parents’ ratings, respectively. Further, differences between the teachers’ and parents’ ratings in the percentage of children in three categories were not statistically significant except for the cooperation domain (χ 2 = 6.48 df = 2, n = 546, p = 0.03).

The social skills of preschool children from the teachers’ and parents’ perspectives and related differences (n = 546).

* Chi-square test.

Table 4 presents the correlations between parents’–teachers’ agreement ratings of social skills in preschool children. A statistically significant correlation was reported between both cooperation ratings (r = 0.14, p < 0.001), the parents’ cooperation ratings, and the teachers’ total social skills ratings (r = 0.12, p = 0.003). In addition, a statistically significant correlation was found between both assertion ratings (r = 0.15, p < 0.001), the parents’ assertion ratings, and the teachers’ total social skills ratings (r = 0.10, p = 0.013). Additionally, there was a statistically significant correlation between the parents’ self-control ratings and the teachers’ cooperation ratings (r = 0.08, p = 0.03). Finally, in the total social skill domains, statistically significant correlations were found between the parents’ total social skills ratings and the teachers’ cooperation (r = 0.11, p = 0.005), assertion (r = 0.11, p = 0.009), and total social skills ratings (r = 0.13, p = 0.002).

Correlation coefficients of the parents’ and the teachers’ ratings (n = 546).

- p < 0.10; * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001.

The multivariable linear regression analysis to investigate the association between sociodemographic variables and social skill domain scores from the parents’ and teachers’ ratings is shown in Table 5 . Only variables presented in this table showed statistically significant associations with at least one domain of social skills from the parents’ or the teachers’ perspectives. An inverse significant association was found between boys’ self-control (b = −0.46, 95% CI = −0.76, −0.16) and boys’ total social skills (b = −1.91, 95% CI = −3.66, −0.15), and child gender from the parents’ ratings. However, no statistically significant association was reported between the child’s gender and the teachers’ social skills ratings. In addition, an inverse association was found between self-control and the second birth rank (b = −0.43, 95% CI = −0.83, −0.03) and the third or more birth rank (b = −0.97, 95% CI = −1.93, −0.02) from the teachers’ ratings. Further, there were direct significant associations between the assertion domain (b = 2.08, 95% CI = 0.58, 3.58) and total social skills (b = 3.48, 95% CI = 0.65, 6.32), and 30–40 years of the fathers’ age and assertion domain (b = 2.21, 95% CI = 0.36, 4.06), and total social skills (b = 3.85, 95% CI = 0.35, 7.36) with the father’s age (>40 years) from the parents’ perspectives. From the teachers’ perspectives, an inverse relationship was reported between the cooperation domain and the father’s unemployment (b = −4.61, 95% CI = −9.11, −0.10). Additionally, an inverse association was found between children’s cooperation and teacher’s age >40 years (b = −2.43, 95% CI = −4.83, −0.03) from the parents’ ratings and teacher’s age 30–40 years (b = −2.01, 95% CI = −3.86, −0.17) from the teachers’ ratings. In addition, a direct relationship was found between children’s self-control and teachers with a master degree education level (b = 1.08, 95% CI = 0.03, 2.14) from the parents’ perspectives. Furthermore, direct relationships were found between children’s cooperation (b = 8.25, 95% CI = 12.13, 4.38), assertion (b = 3.14, 95% CI = 5.33, 0.96), self-control (b = 1.98, 95% CI = 2.88, 1.08), and total social skills (b = 13.38, 95% CI = 19.33, 7.43), and teachers with a master education level from the teachers’ perspectives. Furthermore, there were direct associations between children’s cooperation, assertion, self-control, total social skills, and teachers with 5–10 years of teaching experiences, and teachers with >10 years of teaching experiences based on the teachers’ perspectives. Moreover, there were inverse associations between children’s cooperation (b = −3.42, 95% CI = −6.39, −0.47), assertion (b = −2.02, 95% CI = −3.69, −0.36), self-control (b = −0.78, 95% CI = −1.47, −0.10), and total social skills (b = −6.23, 95% CI = −10.76, −1.71) and >30 children in each preschool classroom from the teachers’ ratings. Finally, a direct relationship was found between children’s assertion and coeducational classes from the parents’ perspectives (b = 2.08, 95% CI = 0.095, 4.07).

Association between sociodemographic variables and social skill domains from the parents’ and teachers’ ratings.

* b coefficient was obtained according to the multivariable linear regression A: Assertion, C: Cooperation, S: Self-control, T: Total social skills; * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001.

4. Discussion

The findings of this study revealed that the social skills of girls were more than those of boys at home. The majority of children had a moderate level of social skills from the parents’ and teachers’ perspectives. A modest parent–teacher agreement was found in most domains of social skills. Further, statistically significant associations were reported between children’s social skill domains and the child’s birth rank, father’s age, father’s job, teacher’s age, teacher’s education level, teacher’s teaching experience, and preschool classroom in terms of the numbers of children and the type of classroom.

From the teachers’ ratings, no correlation was found between both genders except high assertion scores in boys in preschool. From the parents’ ratings, girls had higher social skills in the subscale of cooperation, self-control, and total social skills at home. The reports of studies in Western societies showed that girls had more social skills than boys [ 5 , 15 , 40 , 41 ]. However, previous studies on Iranian preschool children showed no significant relationship between total social skills and the gender of children from teachers’ perspectives [ 29 , 30 ]. Taverna et al. showed that cultural differences had significant roles in the creation of different expectations in children [ 31 ]. Further, cultural stereotypes and reactions influence gender roles and gender-related behaviors [ 22 ]. In Eastern countries, female children are expected to be chaste, modest, and gentle in community settings than boys during childhood and other periods of their life. In this regard, Iranian female children often display their capabilities less, especially social skills to others in social environments [ 27 , 32 , 42 ]. In addition, due to social expectations, Iranian teachers show less tolerance to social problems in female children than male children and as a result, they evaluate the social skills of girls lower than boys [ 29 ].

In addition to cultural characteristics that encourage Iranian girls to become cooperative, submissive to tasks, kind, responsive, and empathic at home [ 32 , 42 ], based on the Bandura’s social cognitive learning theory, children are more likely to prefer the same behavioral patterns of their homogenous parents. Therefore, girls are adapted to social behaviors in preschool, such as cooperation and accountability, but boys’ modeling of behaviors is more active and aggressive [ 43 , 44 ]. Further, educational settings prescribe gender roles and ask children to demonstrate related social skills in a variety of environments. Men are widely portrayed in an active manner, but females’ presence is mainly limited to traditional roles at home [ 45 ]. Therefore, in this study, girls’ social skills at home were evaluated to be higher in cooperation, self-control, and total social skills than those of boys at home, which was consistent with the results of other studies conducted in Iran [ 22 , 30 ]. Higher assertion in boys can be attributed to the abovementioned reasons [ 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 ].

In addition to gender differences in social skills described in this study, gender differences in other areas of development such as self-concept and environmental empathy are present [ 47 , 48 ]. Self-concept as a multifaceted belief system is evaluated in relation to the environment. According to Muthuri and Arasa’s study, males had a higher overall self-concept than females [ 49 ]. Environmental empathy is the individual’s ability to understand and respond to the environment. Musitu-Ferrer et al. reported that females showed higher environmental emotional empathy than males [ 47 ].

The results of present study showed that the majority of children had a moderate level of cooperation, assertion, self-control, and total social skills from both the teachers’ and parents’ perspectives. In the preschool age, children get the first experiences of socialization at home and school. Therefore, their initial experiences are reported at a moderate level [ 14 , 29 , 30 , 50 ].

There was a significant parent–teacher agreement on social skills in all domains except self-control, but it was modest in magnitude. The social competence is multifaceted, and children’s social behaviors are different at home and school. Therefore, children’s behaviors vary across situations [ 51 ]. This finding is supported by the teacher–parent agreement on children’s behaviors [ 14 , 52 , 53 ]. Significant correlations between the parents’ and teachers’ ratings support the notion of cross-situation consistency in children’s social behaviors [ 14 ].

The findings of this study showed an inverse significant association between the birth rank and self-control from the teachers’ ratings. In general, higher birth ranks have an inverse effect on cognitive and social development [ 54 ]. Self-control is an individual’s ability to control ambitions to achieve long-term goals [ 55 ]. Parents are worried for their firstborn children, which affects how they bring them up. Therefore, firstborn children achieve more self-control than other children [ 56 , 57 ].

In this study, the social skills of children with older fathers were found to be greater than those of children with younger fathers. Parenting as a complex activity consists of special methods and behaviors that interact with each other and influence the child’s social development. Therefore, parenting skills are affected by cultural, economic conditions, and the parent’s knowledge [ 58 ]. The authoritative style of parenting is most common among intact European American families and helps children to gain higher levels of social competence [ 59 ]. Yousefi’s study in Iran showed that the authoritative parental style was associated with low social skills in children [ 60 ]. Accordingly, in the Iranian culture, permissive parenting by parents aged 35–45 years leads to higher development of social skills in children [ 59 , 60 ]. With the increase of parents’ age, they become less negligent [ 61 ]. Furthermore, an association between increasing parental age and parental knowledge is available. Therefore, higher parental knowledge leads to a higher quality of the home environment and less possibility of children’s neglect or abuse [ 62 ]. Parents with greater knowledge provide verbal and physical stimulations to children, utilize less negative disciplinary strategies, and interact more with children [ 63 ]. In addition, economic conditions, the childhood environment, and the family’s standard of living are improved with parents’ age [ 64 , 65 ].

Children with teachers that have a higher education level had higher social skills. Education in early childhood is important for social skill development in future life [ 66 ]. Experienced teachers engage themselves in sensitive and stimulating interactions with children at early childhood and create richer learning experiences [ 67 ]. Further, children educated by qualified early childhood teachers are more sociable and have higher levels of language skills and cognitive abilities [ 68 ].

In this study, children educated by more experienced teachers achieved higher scores in social skills. It can be said that teachers with more work experience and those with more in-service training can improve children’s life skills [ 69 , 70 ]. Such work experience is needed for better time management, evaluation methods, practices and feedback given on children’s ability, and social performance [ 71 ]. Such teachers educate children on how to solve social problems and adapt to negative life situations [ 19 , 72 ].

In this study, children studying in classrooms with more than 30 children had lower social skills. There is an inverse relationship between classroom size and social learning, so the learning of social skills in large classrooms can be worse than that in small classrooms [ 73 ]. A large classroom size reduces the frequency and quality of interactions and feedback between teacher and children [ 74 ]. Small classrooms create individualized instructions, higher-quality instructions, increased teacher morale, fewer disruptions, less child misbehavior, and greater engagement of children in social activities [ 75 ].

This study revealed that children in coeducational classes had more social skills in all domains except self-control, but this was only significant in the assertion domain. Studies reported the positive effects of single-sex education on children’s achievement compared to coeducational education [ 76 , 77 , 78 ]. By contrast, the major benefits of coeducation could be personal and social development in children. Actually, educating both genders creates more real life experiences and makes it easier to practice working in a mixed environment [ 78 ]. In addition, it prevents the development of mixed-gender anxiety and avoidance of mixed-gender situations [ 79 ]. Coeducation can better prepare young children for cross-gender interactions and integration into society [ 77 ].

4.1. Limitations

Generalizability of findings to preschool children in other contexts needs further studies due to cultural differences affecting the development of social skills in children. The study sample size was limited to children at the 6th year of age and living in an urban area, but no data were collected from children, which should be considered in future studies.

4.2. Contributions and Implications

Data regarding children social skills were collected from the parents’ and teachers’ perspectives as reliable sources of information about children’s development. Therefore, our findings can improve the international knowledge of social skills in children and gender differences affecting children’s adjustment. In addition, this study identified the importance of a child’s birth rank, father’s age, father’s job, teacher’s age, teacher’s education, teacher’s experience, and preschool classrooms influencing social skills. Policymakers can use our findings to improve the development of children’s social skills [ 5 , 66 ]. More attention should be given to younger parents in term of parental tasks and to enhance their positive parental behaviors, which can lead to better children’s social development [ 80 ].

5. Conclusions

Girls had higher cooperation, self-control, and total social skills at home from the parents’ perspectives, but the teachers’ perspectives showed no difference in social skill domains between genders except for a higher level of assertion in boys in preschool. The majority of children had moderate social skills in all domains from the parents’ and teachers’ ratings, and no difference between them was reported, except in cooperation. In addition, a modest parent–teacher agreement in all domains of social skills except self-control was found. Furthermore, statistically significant associations were reported between the parents’ and teachers’ ratings of children’s social skills, and the child’s birth rank, father’s age, father’s job, teacher’s age, teacher’s education, teacher’s experience, preschool classroom in terms of the numbers of children, and the type of classroom. Accordingly, the risk of problems with social skills was reported to be relatively low. More attention should be given to the family status, teacher’s, and preschool center’s characteristics to improve children’s social skills.

Acknowledgments

We thank authorities in the Social Determinants of Health Research Center at Guilan University of Medical Sciences, Rasht Ministry of Education (regions 1 and 2), Welfare Organization authorities, administrators, and the teachers of the preschool centers and the parents who cooperated with this research project.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, M.M. and M.M.C.; Data analysis, M.D. and A.M.; Investigation, M.M.; Methodology, M.M. and M.M.C.; Software, M.D. and A.M.; Supervision, M.M.C.; Writing—original draft, M.M. and A.M. and M.V.; Writing—review and editing, A.M. and M.V.

This article was one part of the research project supported by the Social Determinants of Health Research Center at Guilan University of Medical Sciences, Rasht, Iran.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.