Social Skills of Students from Educational Sciences: Validity, Reliability, and Percentiles for Evaluation

Abstract

The development of social skills (SS) at various stages of life provides the basis for social and academic success throughout life. This cross-sectional study validates and verifies the reliability of the SS checklist proposed by Goldstein et al 1983. The checklist was administered, which is composed of 6 dimensions and 50 SS questions. 671 students between 18 and 25 years of age, belonging to eight professional programs in the area of Educational Sciences, participated. The results showed that five factors explained 41.4% of the variance of the instrument. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin KMO measure of 0.906 and Bartlett's test of sphericity were highly significant (X2= 11020.251, gl= 1225). The factor loadings of the 6 dimensions and the 50 questions ranged between 0.42 and 0.72. The reliability achieved by Cronbach's alpha was r=0.92. The proposal of percentiles will allow classifying low, moderate and high levels of SS, providing information that can be used not only by students, but also for professionals working in higher education. Consequently, it highlights the importance of developing SS not only at home, but also at school and university, since they need to be stimulated at every stage of life to achieve the proposed objectives.