SOCIAL SKILLS AND THE STABILITY OF SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES AND OTHER COMMUNITY MEMBERS

Stability of social relationships may be an important indicator of lif estyle quality. Fifteen individuals with intellectual disabilities par ticipated in an analysis of the relationship between their social skil ls (as measured via the Scales of Independent Behavior and the Assessm ent of Social Competence) and the stability of the social relationship s they experienced with other community members, who were neither paid staff nor family members, across the course of 94 consecutive weeks. A participant's social skills did a moderately good job of predicting the average social stability achieved by all of his or her social netw ork members, but a poorer job of predicting the average social stabili ty achieved by the participant's three most stable social network memb ers. The findings suggest that the stability of a participant's most s table social network members is based not on the participant's social skills, but rather on other factors.