Preschoolers’ Social Skills: Advances in Assessment for Intervention Using Social Behavior Ratings

Social skills play an important role in young children’s successes in and outside of school. For two decades, educators have
used the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS; Gresham & Elliott, 1990) as a tool for describing children’s social behaviors and for planning interventions to improve social skills. Although widely
used, some researchers have criticized certain aspects of the preschool version of the SSRS. In 2008, a revision of the instrument,
the Social Skills Improvement System–Rating Scales (SSiS-RS; Gresham & Elliott), was published. In this article, we examine the development of the preschool versions of SSRS
and SSiS-RS and provide a comparison of the two rating systems, focusing on the content, structure, psychometric properties,
and intended use of the instruments. We then describe the SSiS-RS within an assessment for intervention model. We conclude
that the SSiS-RS is an improved assessment instrument over the preschool SSRS and provide recommendations for future studies
that will contribute to the evolving validity evidence for the resulting scores and decisions made from them.