ASSESSING AND ENHANCING GENERALIZATION AND SOCIAL VALIDITY OF SOCIAL-SKILLS INTERVENTIONS WITH CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS

Generalization and social validity are necessary aspects of any applie d behavior analytic endeavor. They are specially critical to social-sk ills training research and practice. Investigators have demonstrated t he effectiveness of various learning theory-based interventions in tea ching social skills to and increasing peer interactions of children wi th and without disabilities. However, development of a technology for reliably transferring these changes across different situations or ens uring their persistence over time has proven to be more problematic. F rom both a conceptual and empirical standpoint, this article reviews p rogress in and barriers to assessing and enhancing generality of socia l behavior change and its relationship to social validity. If progress is to be made, then it will be necessary to (a) distinguish between g eneralization and generality in developing and evaluating social-skill s interventions; (b) expand the concept of social validity to give mor e emphasis to objective measurement of social skills, interventions, a nd outcomes; and (c) pursue a systematic analysis of generality- and d urability-programming tactics.