THE ROLE OF SOCIAL AWARENESS IN THE EMPLOYMENT SUCCESS OF ADOLESCENTSWITH MILD MENTAL-RETARDATION

The rot of Greenspan's (1979, 1981a) three social awareness components (sensitivity, insight, and communication) in the employment success o f adolescents with mild mental retardation was examined. First, a vali d and reliable set of social awareness descriptors was developed using a five-step development process. Second, special educators used these social awareness descriptors and two measures of employment success ( employment stability and work performance) to rate 125 adolescents wit h mild mental retardation. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) revealed no statistically significant differences in the social awaren ess of adolescents with higher or lower levels of employment stability . However, a statistical significant difference in the social awarenes s of participants with higher or lower work performance ratings was fo und. Post hoc descriptive discriminant analysis indicated that the com munication component of social awareness contributed the most to the s eparation between adolescents with high or low work performance.