Dimensions of social and personal skills in children and adolescents: age and gender differences
International Journal of Development Research
Dimensions of social and personal skills in children and adolescents: age and gender differences
Received 15th October, 2017; Received in revised form 24th November, 2017; Accepted 29th December, 2017; Published online 31st January, 2018.
Copyright ©2018, Tania Gaspar et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Personal and social skills play a key role in children and adolescents’ development, as well as their psychological wellbeing. Was used the Scale "For me it’s Easy" to assess personal and social skills in children and adolescents. The study includes 960 Portuguese children and adolescents with a mean age of 12.5 years (SD = 1.61). Included were 56.8 % boys of different educational levels. The studied version of the instruments demonstrated good psychometric properties and the factor structure identifies 5 dimensions of personal and social skills (Basic Skills, Problem Solving, Emotional Regulation, Interpersonal Relationships and Defining Objectives). Differences were found in the social and personal skills related to gender and related to age. The behavior of the different dimensions of social and personal skills was studied. It was found that there was a strong relationship between social and personal skills and psychological well-being in children and adolescents. The study contributes to the research and evaluation of intervention in children and adolescents, especially in the prevention and promotion of personal and social skills and healthy development.
