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Profile of Social Difficulty

The Profile of Social Difficulty (POSD; Coucouvanis, 2005) was developed to help identify gaps in skills needed for successful social interaction. It can be used for children 6-11 years old.

Available from AAPC Publishing

Overview

The Profile of Social Difficulty (POSD; Coucouvanis, 2005) was designed to help identify gaps in skills that are necessary for successful social interaction. The POSD lists skills necessary for social interaction in a hierarchy and provides a profile of current skills in four areas: Fundamental Skills, Social Initiation Skills, Social Response Skills, and Getting Along with Others. Use of the POSD results in an individualized profile that identifies easy and difficulty of these components. Parents, teachers, or others who know a child well can complete the POSD, and the author notes that multiple persons completing a POSD for an individual child can be helpful with identifying needs. This instrument was designed as an outcome measure for the Super Skills intervention. This assessment is a part of the book Super skills: A social skills group program for children with Asperger syndrome, high- functioning autism and related challenges (Coucouvanis, 2005).

Summary

Age: 6-11 years

Time to Administer: 15-20 minutes

Method of Administration: Items are rated on a 6-point Likert scale from “Very Difficult” to “Very Easy.” Parents, teachers, or siblings may complete the questionnaire. A self-report version is available
Yields profile of skills in the four areas assessed

Subscales: Fundamental Skills; Social Initiation Skills; Social Response Skills; Getting Along with Others

Autism Related Research

None found.