Social skills training with young offenders in a borstal: An evaluative study
✍ Scribed by Clive R. Hollin; Graham J. Huff; Felicity Clarkson; Anna C. Edmondson
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1986
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 842 KB
- Volume
- 14
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0090-4392
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✦ Synopsis
An empirical study of the efficacy of social skills training (SST) with young male offenders in custody was conducted. Two forms of SST, a traditional approach and one with some elements of cognitive behavior modification, were compared with attention-placebo controls (unstructured discussion), a no-training group drawn from those judged suitable for SST, and an unreferred control group drawn from the remainder of the borstal population. A variety of pre-and post-training measures were taken, including a wide range of personality measures, staff ratings of institutional behavior, frequency of institutional discipline reports, and ratings of role-play performance. The two behavioral training groups improved significantly on the behavioral role-play assessment, while the controls did not. Institutional discipline reports also improved for the two behavioral training groups, although a similar improvement also was found for the attention-placebo controls. No other measures differentiated between the experimental groups; nor could any distinctions be drawn between the two forms of behavioral training on any measures. It is suggested that the improvement in behavioral ratings may have been a function of familiarity with role-play, and, therefore, the only positive training effectimprovement in institutional disciplinecan be attributed to an attention component. A number of explanations are offered for the lack of generalization of the training effects: It is further suggested that the cognitive training may have been particularly sensitive to a number of inhibiting factors. Finally, several suggestions for future experimentation and training strategies are made.