Socially Wise Strategy: A Digital Program for Students

D. Sue Vernon

Jean B. Schumaker
Donald D. Deshler
Social skills can provide a boost for youths in any situation. Many youths have not learned some of the more complex skills simply because they do not have good models in their environments. This digital program provides computerized instruction in eight social skills plus a strategy for designing their own social skills. Skills covered include: Dealing with Critical Feedback, Coping with “No,” Accepting Advice, Negotiation, Apologizing, Involving Others, Responding to Peer Pressure, and Giving Feedback to Peers. These skills were specifically selected to provide youths with positive alternatives for behaving in situations that have the potential to result in negative consequences for them if not handled appropriately.
For each skill, instruction from a narrator is interspersed with interactive activities and video clips of youths performing the skills. Each student will need to have access to a computer onto which the program has been downloaded. The instructor will need to monitor student use of the program, check student performance of each skill, and provide feedback.

$46.00

SKU: Media-CD-SIQ Categories: , ,

Additional information

Publisher

Edge Enterprises, Inc.
Year Printed

2010
Includes

CD (Program also available on a flash drive for an additional charge of $6.00)

Description

Research on the Socially Wise Strategy CD for Students

Overview
The Socially Wise Strategy CD is a computerized program for teaching students eight complex social skills. This study was conducted on three social skills in the program: Apologizing, Including Others, and Responding to Peer Pressure. It was conducted with 39 youths who were participating in the Boys and Girls Club after-school program; 46% of them represented minority populations. They were randomly assigned according to gender and age (11-13 yrs. and 14-16 yrs.) to an experimental and a control group. A pretest-posttest control-group design was employed.

Students in the experimental group worked through the interactive computerized program independently. Students in the control group took part in regularly scheduled Boys and Girls Club activities. They took quizzes at various points during the program. They had to reach the mastery criterion in order to be allowed to progress to the next lesson or next portion of a lesson. Their final performance of the social skills was checked in a role-play situation with a researcher.

Before and after the experimental group worked through the CD program, all participating youths took written knowledge tests and a role-play test covering the three targeted social skills. The written tests required students to name the steps of each skill and to write information related to the skill. The role-play test involved a researcher reading several social situations to the student, one at a time. For each, the student was asked to interact with the researcher as he/she might in a real social situation just like the one described.

Results
With regard to the knowledge tests, on the pretests, the experimental youths earned a mean of 17% of the points available. The control youths earned a mean of 17% of the points available. On the posttests, the experimental youths earned a mean of 88% of the points, and the control youths earned a mean of 22% of the points. The results of an ANCOVA on the Apologizing Skill test indicated that there was a significant difference between the posttest scores of the two groups [F(2, 35) = 126.076, p < .000, η 2 = .783], in favor of the experimental group. The results of an ANCOVA on the Involving Others test indicated that there was a significant difference between the posttest scores of the two groups [F(2, 35) = 251.881, p < .000, η 2 = .878], in favor of the experimental group. The results of an ANCOVA on the Responding to Peer Pressure indicated that there was a significant difference between the posttest scores of the two groups [F(2, 35) = 85.841, p < .000, η 2 = .710], in favor of the experimental group. These effect sizes represented very large effects between the groups. Results of a t-test showed a significant difference between the pretest and posttest scores for the experimental group. ANCOVAs conducted on the posttest scores of the subgroups (gender, minority status, and SES group) also indicated significant differences between the experimental and control youths in each subgroup case, again with very large effect sizes.

On the tests of student use of the social skills where youths performed the skills in role-play situations, the experimental youths earned an average of 38% of the points available on the pretest and 95% of the points on the posttest for the Apologizing Skill. The control students earned an average of 28% and 37% of the points on the pretest and posttest, respectively. An ANCOVA revealed a significant difference between the groups’ posttest scores [F[2, 35 ] = 108.158, p < .000, η 2 = .756, in favor of the experimental group. For the Including Others Skill, the experimental youths earned an average of 42% of the points available on the pretest and 98% of the points on the posttest. The control students earned an average of 39% and 35% of the points on the pretest and posttest, respectively. An ANCOVA revealed a significant difference between the groups’ posttest scores [F[2, 32 ] = 88.864, p < .000, η 2 = .735, in favor of the experimental group. For the Responding to Peer Pressure Skill, the experimental youths earned an average of 38% of the points available on the pretest and 93% of the points on the posttest. The control students earned an average of 40% and 29% of the points on the pretest and posttest, respectively. An ANCOVA revealed a significant difference between the groups’ posttest scores [F[2, 34] = 68.724, p < .000, η 2 = .669, in favor of the experimental group. All of these effect sizes are very large. Results of a t-test revealed a significant difference between the pretest and posttest scores for the experimental group. ANCOVAs conducted on the posttest scores of the subgroups (gender, minority status, and SES group) also indicated significant differences between the experimental and control youths in each subgroup case, again with very large effect sizes.


Conclusions
The Socially Wise Strategy CD program when combined with some practice and feedback from an adult is an effective means of teaching the three targeted social skills to students. All students reached mastery on all the lessons in the program. Experimental youths’ knowledge and use of the social skills increased significantly from pretest to posttest, and their posttest scores exceeded the scores of a same-age comparison group. Experimental youths’ posttest scores were significantly different from the posttest scores of the control youths after the pretest scores were used as a covariate for the whole group and for subgroups of the youths indicating that the program was equally effective for girls and boys, those representing minorities and those not, and those living in poverty and those not.

References
Vernon, S. (2008). Effects of a hypermedia program on the use of three social skills by at-risk youths. Phase II Continuation report for SBIR Grant #2 R44

About the Author

D. Sue Vernon, Ph.D.

Affliations

Research Affiliate and Certified SIM Professional Development Specialist
University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning
Lawrence, KS

Lecturer
Department of Special Education
University of Kansas
Lawrence, KS

Retired Director of Research & Development
Edge Enterprises, Inc.
Lawrence, KS
My Background and Interests
By wearing my different hats (a university instructor, a certified teaching-parent, a trainer and evaluator of child-care workers, a SIM professional development specialist, a parent of three children [including one with exceptionalities], and a researcher), I have gained knowledge and experience from a number of perspectives. I have a history of working with at-risk youth with and without exceptionalities (e.g., students with learning disabilities, emotional disturbance, behavioral disorders) in community-based residential group-home treatment programs and in schools. I also have extensive experience with training, evaluating, and monitoring staff who work with these populations, and I have conducted research with and adapted curricula for high-poverty populations. In addition to the Socially Wise program, I’ve developed and field-tested, cooperative thinking strategies programs, community-building curricula, communication skills instruction, and professional development programs. I have also developed and validated social skills measurement instruments. As a lecturer of graduate-level university courses in the Department of Special Education at the University of Kansas, I have taught courses designed to enable teachers to access and become proficient in validated research-based practices.

The Story Behind the Socially Wise Program
My focus for the last 30 years has been on helping youths learn, and especially on helping them learn how to use social skills. My interest in social skills instruction began when I was a teaching-parent in a group home for adolescents who had a history of social problems. Clearly, those youths had not learned the social skills they needed to be successful in today’s world. Nevertheless, experience showed they could learn to use social skills well, given the right type of instruction. Later, I was the co-founder and Director of Training and Evaluation of the Teaching-Family Homes of Upper Michigan, originally developed through funding from the Michigan State Department of Mental Health and Father Flanagan’s Boys Home. This new agency eventually provided services to over 1,000 youths per day in schools, residential group homes, regional treatment centers, treatment foster homes, schools, and in counseling centers. My primary responsibility in this position was teaching adults (e.g., parents, teachers, foster parents, counselors) to teach social skills to children, and everyday I witnessed these adults successfully teaching the various skills to the youths in their care. Unfortunately, the population receiving instruction was often children who were already involved in the juvenile justice “system.” They were in trouble and had been removed from their homes. As I watched their growing success, I wanted to find a way to introduce social skills instruction as a way to prevent social problems – I wanted to teach children alternative ways of behaving that would help them not only to stay out of trouble but also to create and maintain relationships. I thought the perfect place to prevent problems would be in schools.

As a result, a whole line of research on social skills instruction was born. The Socially Wise CD Program, the latest program to be developed, was created because teachers have so little time to teach social skills to students. Our goal was to develop a program that benefited students with and without exceptionalities, that students could use at their own pace, and that teachers could use to teach selected skills as needed to individual students. The social skills covered in the program are basic skills that students need to get along well with peers and authority figures.

My thoughts about the Socially Wise CD Program
I have observed the Socially Wise CD program being used with different populations in middle and junior high schools and in extracurricular settings (e.g., Boys and Girls Club). I believe the program can be adapted to a variety of settings. It is very successful as long as an instructor can work with each student in the final phase to role-play situations and provide individual feedback.

Teacher and Student Feedback about Socially Wise CD Instruction
Students and teachers have told me and other staff members that this is a popular program. They have rated the program very highly, and students appear to enjoy working through the program.

My Contact Information
Please contact me at svernon2@windstream.net

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