Abstract
Recently, social skills education (SSE) has been widely practiced in Japanese schools. Social skills scales are important for evaluating the effects of social skills education. The purpose of the present study was to review the social skills scales used in Japan from the viewpoint of their application to social skills education. In the first part of the review, 23 publications on social skills education as practiced in Japan were reviewed, in order to clarify the requirements necessary for evaluating effects of social skills education from the viewpoint of the contents of the social skills scales used. The review revealed 2 necessary requirements: (a) precise assessment of the social skills that are the target of social skills education, and (b) exhaustive assessment of general social skills. In the second part of the review, 34 social skills scales used in Japan were reviewed in order to determine whether they fulfilled those 2 conditions. The results indicated that, using existing social skills scales, (a) it is impossible to do an exhaustive assessment of general social skills, and (b) it is impossible to do a precise assessment of the social skills that are the target of social skills education. Future directions for research on the development of social skills scales were discussed.
