The recently published book Social Skills Assessment through Games: The New Best Practice explores how game-based assessments and interventions can be used to improve children’s social skills.
In the book, the authors do the following:
- Review the social skills research literature on the different types of social skills, developmental shifts from childhood through adolescence, and the far-reaching negative effects of social skills deficits
- Examine traditional approaches for assessing children’s social skills and social functioning, including behavioral rating scales, observations, peer nominations, and interviewing
- Demonstrate how game-based social skills assessment can transcend the limitations of traditional methods
- Provide insight into how game-based social skills assessments can be used to inform and enhance social interventions with children in schools and at home—for example, how they align with the Response to Intervention (RtI) and Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) approaches that schools use to implement and assess interventions.
The book is intended to help educators, clinicians, and parents understand various traditional and game-based social skills assessment approaches and make informed decisions about which methods best meet their needs and the needs of the children being assessed.
