Teachers' Social Validity Ratings of Social Skills: Comparisons between Mildly Handicapped and Nonhandicapped Children

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Abstract
Teachers have certain expectations or standards for children's social behavior in mainstream classrooms. The purpose of the present study was to document regular education teachers' social behavior standards for a sample (N = 250) of mildly handicapped (LD, BD, and MR) and nonhandicapped students matched on sex and race. Using the teacher version of the Social Skills Rating Scale (SSRS-T), 125 teachers rated the importance of 50 objectively described social behaviors. Results of the teachers' ratings indicated that they valued academic-related social behaviors as more important to classroom functioning than peer-to-peer interaction behaviors. High rater agreement, as measured by rank-order correlations, was demonstrated between Black and White teachers (rho = .96) and male and female students (rho = .93). Rank-order correlations between each handicapped subsample and matched nonhandicapped subsamples were also high (rho ranged from .91 to .98). Thus, teachers' ratings of importance did not vary much as a function of student race, sex, or classification. These findings are discussed in the context of a “model behavior profile” expected for students in classrooms and the appropriate selection of target behaviors for intervention.