Addressing quality of life issues in adolescents: Social skills interventions

Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine whether social skills training can improve the social interaction skills of adolescents with craniofacial conditions (CFCs) in a natural environment (school lunchroom). Design: This study used a pre-post between-group comparison design. Differences between treatment and control subjects were analyzed via a repeated measures analysis of variance. Setting: The observations were conducted in the respective school lunch-rooms of the adolescents. Social skills groups were conducted in an outpatient clinic setting. Main Outcome Measures: Structured data based on 45 minutes of observation was coded for type, frequency, and duration of social contact. Specific measures included subject initiations and responses, peer initiations and responses, conversation events, total positive communication, and frequency of nondirected comments. Results: Both target and peer-controlled total communication improved across time with adolescents receiving social skills intervention showing significantly more improvement than those adolescents not receiving direct social skills interventions. Adolescents receiving treatment participated in significantly more target initiated conversations lasting at least three interchanges and showed a trend toward a greater frequency of target initiations and positive responses to peer initiations. Peers were more likely to respond to treatment subject initiations after intervention. Fewer treatment subjects used nondirected communication, whereas control subjects continued to use nondirected communication at a slightly increased frequency. Conclusions: This study provides preliminary evidence that social skills training can increase the frequency of positive social interactions with peers for adolescents with CFCs.