Knowledge of Social Skills among Institutionalized Juvenile Delinquents

A number of researchers have developed social skills training programs for juvenile delinquents, based on the assumption that they lack social skills. In order to assess knowledge of social skills among juvenile delinquents, a sample of 411 adolescent offenders was obtained. The sample consisted of all adjudicated male delinquents aged 12 to 15 admitted to a state training school over a sixteen-month period of time. Data were obtained on a measure of knowledge of social skills, the Adolescent Problems Inventory (API), along with a variety of measures of personality, behavioral, social intellectual, and educational skills. The adolescents were divided into three groups: a group competent in knowledge of social skills, a group that was incompetent, and one that was moderately competent. Analyses of variance among these three groups suggested that they differed along a number of dimensions. In particular, the group that had the lowest scores in terms of knowledge of social skills appeared to have a wide variety of behavioral difficulties. The usefulness of social skills assessment in terms of classification is discussed, as are implications for treatment.