7/28/2019 Association for Science in Autism Treatment - Measuring Social Skills Goals

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Clinician's Corn... Measuring Social... ResourcesFAQClinician's CornerForumMeasuring Social Skills GoalsI am a parent of a 7-year-old with autism who has responded well to her earlyintervention program based on ABA. I would like her educational program toaddress social skills more extensively. My child's school-based team hasinformed me that they are seeking to improve the quantity and quality of herinteractions with classmates, but they have been reluctant to include socialskill goals on the IEP given the challenges associated with measurement. Do youhave any suggestions?Lara Delmolino, Ph.D., BCBAAssociate Director, Douglass Developmental Disabilities CenterClinical Associate Professor, Graduate School of Applied and ProfessionalPsychology,Rutgers, the State University of New JerseyGiven what we know about the core deficits of autism, it is very important thateducational teams target deficits associated with social relatedness,conversation skills, play skills, etc. Your situation is fairly common. Incontrast to social skills, academic skills lend themselves more easily toprecise quantification, definition and measurement. Clinicians, educators and

researchers who are addressing social behavior can all relate to the challengeof clearly defining and measuring this critical area of skill.A first step in developing social objectives and articulating the methods formeasuring and evaluating progress toward those goals is to continually ask thequestion, How will we know when...? Clear outcomes which include observablebehavior should guide the wording of the objective. For example, for anobjective to improve conversational reciprocity, the focus should be onidentifying How will we know when her reciprocal conversation skills haveimproved? Precise behaviors related to this outcome can then be observed andmeasured in naturally occurring and contrived situations. For example, outcomesassociated with this objective for a particular learner may be: 1) an increasednumber of conversational exchanges; 2) an increased number of questions directed

to the conversational partner; and 3) an increase in the demonstration of eyecontact linked with verbal statements.For skills like this, it helpful to use probe data for measurement. Probe datarefers to the use of occasional samples of data (in contrast to continuous datacollection) to check for the presence, absence, or performance level of a skill. Probe data can be collected during a random time sample or during morestructured opportunities since monitoring each occurrence of such interactionswhile the child is busy at school or at play may not always be feasible,particularly in a public school setting.A number of variables can be measured, including; number of conversationalturns, number of times a child addresses a question to a classmate or otherconversational partner, occurrences of spontaneously offering information, timeintervals or percentage of statements/exchanges with appropriate eye contact or

physical proximity, etc. (depending on those skills that have been targeted forimprovement). For students learning more basic social skills, data can becollected regarding the percent of opportunities or intervals in which thestudent played in proximity or in parallel to peers, responded to greetings,approached other students, etc. If the conversation or play skill is beingtargeted in a more restricted setting (e.g., in the resource room or as part ofa SLP led language group), it would also be important to measure whether theskill is occurring in more natural settings (such as with classmates).In summary, two things may help when addressing this challenge.Focus on an observable outcome. The fact that social skills need to be

7/28/2019 Association for Science in Autism Treatment - Measuring Social Skills Goals

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addressed is related to something observable. In other words, How do we knowshe needs improvement in (specific social skill)? There must be somethingobservable that supports this objective. For instance, We know she needsimprovement in engaging in social conversation with peers because she rarelyif ever has such conversations. Taking this information and turning it intoan observable outcome is essential. That is, We will know when (specificsocial skill) has improved when we see that she (observable behaviors).The use of sampling procedures, contrived opportunities and data collectionfrom permanent products (such as videotape) can provide a means for measuringprogress toward a given objective, even when teaching occurs in many othercircumstances. In other words, the data need not be generated during eachteaching interaction. Teaching these objectives can occur in role playsituations or group social skills groups. Furthermore, teaching efforts canutilize individual reinforcement systems, with data focusing on application of

skills in regularly planned social opportunities.

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