Relationship between social skills, socio-economic status, gender and age in children at secondary school students

The purpose of this study is twofold: to adapt Matson Evaluation of Social Skills With Youngsters (MESSY) into Turkish and to determine whether children's social skills differ depending on age, gender and socio economic status. The sample of the study consisted of 526 students (244 males and 282 females) from 3 public secondary schools in Ankara. Reliability of the MESSY were obtained by test-retest and Cronbach Alpha internal consistency method. To determine construct validity, correlations with Social Skills Scale and Teacher Rating Form were applied. In order to determine whether children's social skills differ depending on age, gender and socio-economic status, three separate two-way analysis of variance were applied. The results revealed that MESSY was valid and reliable to determine children's social skills. The study showed that children's general social skillsIV levels was significantly related to gender. Girls scored significantly higher than boys in MESSY total scores. It shows that girls perceive their social skills higher than boys. Further, results revealed that negative social behaviors were significantly related to age of the students. 14 years old children scored higher than 12 and 13 years old children in Negative Social Behaviors subscale of MESSY. Finally, it was found that gender and socio-economic status have common effect on positive social behaviors of children. That is, girls from upper socio-economic status scored higher in Positive Social Behaviors subscale than girls from middle and lower socio-economic status. Keywords: MESSY, social skills, secondary school.