Abstract
The purposes of this study were to develop a Self-rating Scale of Social Skills for Elementary School Children (SSS-E) , and to examine the buffering effects of acquired social skills on psychological school stress in elementary school children. In study I , as a result of factor analysis from the data of 1,379 children from the 4th to 6th grades, 3 main factors were identified : prosocial skills, withdrawal behavior and aggressive behavior, which were extracted from initial set of 20 items. In study II, 1,283 children completed the School Stressor Scale for Elementary School Children (Shimada et al., 1992a) , the Stress Response Scale for Elementary School Children (Shimada et al., 1992) and SSSE. A two factors ANOVA, with acquired social skills and school stressor as independent variables, and stress responses as a dependent variable, suggested that acquired social skills have buffering effects on psychological school stress in elementary school children. This result was extracted from combinations of main effects and interactions of ANOVA . Finally, the importance of acquired prosocial skills in elementary school life and the usefulness of social skills training for school stress management for coping with stress were discussed.
