Date of Award

Spring 5-1-2000

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Elizabeth O'Laughlin

Second Advisor

Carol Yoder

Third Advisor

Thomas Johnson

Abstract

The development and maintenance of adolescent peer relationships has been recognized by researchers as important for healthy current and future psycho-social adjustment. Furthermore, adolescent friendships are developmentally unique and qualitatively different than childhood friendships. The present study examines the validity, reliability and clinical utility of the Teenage Inventory of Social Skills (TISS), a self-report measure of adolescent social/friendship skills. Self-report and teacher/adult ratings on the TISS were compared for 64 participants from a court-ordered, residential treatment program and 51 adolescent participants from a public school-based youth group. While overall results confirmed the clinical utility and psychometric superiority of the TISS, gender differences between the clinical and nonclinical groups affected study results. However, after taking gender into account, the TISS was still found to discriminate well between the clinical and nonclinical samples. In addition, support was also found for both concurrent and discriminant validity for the TISS. Contrary to predictions, the teacher/adult ratings, rather than the self-report ratings on the TISS proved to be the best predictor of group membership. The results of this study support the validity and clinical usefulness of the TISS and suggest a number of directions for future research.

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