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Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 5 (2010) 11751179

WCPCG-2010

Gender differences in social skills, problem behaviours and

academic competence of Iranian kindergarten children based
on their parent and teacher ratings
Beheshteh Abdia *
Iranian Academic Center for Education Culture and Research, Teacher Training Branch, Tehran, Iran
Received January 6, 2010; revised February 9, 2010; accepted March 25, 2010

Abstract
Parents (n=610) and teachers (n= 228) of 292 girls and 318 boys answered the Social Skills Rating System-Parent
and Teacher forms (Gresham & Elliot,1990) which aimed at investigating gender differences on social skills,
problem behaviors and academic competences of Iranian kindergarten children. Results showed that girls scored higher
than boys on social skills. Conversely, teachers and parents scored boys higher than girls on the externalizing and
hyperactivity problem behaviors with no gender differences on internalizing. Also, girls scored higher than boys on
academic competences.
2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Social skills; ProblemR behaviors; gender differences; Teacher rating; Parent rating; Social Skills Rating System;
kindergarten children.

1. Introduction
Social skills have been defined as "Socially acceptable learned behaviors which enable children to interact
effectively with others and avoid unacceptable response" (Gresham& Elliot, 1990, p.2).
Researchers (i.e. Gresham& Elliot, 1990; Parkhust & Asher, 1992; Manz , Fantuzzo& McDermott,1999)
considered social skills and also academic competence in conjunction with problem behaviors and called these
three concepts as subdomain of social competence. It is considered as one of the most important accomplishments
of childhood years (Bracken, Keith, Walker & 1994; Jamyang- Tshring, 2004).
Accordingly, the emphasis on the social competence of preschoolers and kindergartner stems from data which
indicate the transition from preschool to kindergarten education is a critical one and this transition has been
associated with increased psychological distress for both boys and girls due to complexity of the social
environment they encounter (Chung, Elias & Shneider, 1993).

* Beheshteh Abdi, Tel: +982188309292,

E-mail address: b_abdi2006@yahoo.com

1877-0428 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2010.07.256

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Beheshteh Abdi / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 5 (2010) 11751179

Literature study shows that the development of social skills relationships and problem behaviors often differ by
gender, starting at early age. While girls are more likely to possess higher social skills and academic competence,
boys have often more problem behaviors (Grasham & Elliot, 1990; Lioyd & Smith, 1986; Benenson, 1996;
Roberts & Strayer, 1996; Nemeth, 1999; Taylor, Liang, Tracy, Williams & Seigle, 2002; Huaqing & Kaiser,
2003, Keane & Calkins, 2004, Margets, 2005). Clearly, further research is needed to help understand the gender
differences on social competence.
Moreover, children's social competence may be influenced profoundly by their environment and cultural
background. Evidence shows that different cultures place different emphasis on communication and socialization
skills and have different standards for accepted and problematic behaviors (Nourani, 1998). However, this topic
has not been investigated in a major way by professionals in non-western countries. Iran is among the countries in
which research on the assessment of children's social behavior in particular, has received little attention (Nourani,
1998). Investigating social competence across cultures may help in providing a universally agreed upon definition
of the construct of social competence in the professional community.
On the other hand, in most studies, a single informant was used to categorize the social skills and problem
behaviors of children, such as peers (Pakaslahti & Keltikangas-Jrvinen, 2001), or teachers (Rodkin et al., 2000).
In the present study we used the judgments of different informants, namely teachers and parents, because both
informants can share valuable information about the child's social behaviors (Schweinhart & weikart, 1989;
Jamyang- Tshring, 2004). Thus, it may be important to measure social competence of Iranian girls and boys in
several environments, both at home and at school.
2. Method
2.1. Participants
The sample for this study was drawn from kindergarten children in the city of Tehran. The parents (n =610)
and teachers (n = 228) of 610 kindergarten children (292 girls and 318 boys) were asked to rate the social
behaviors of the children who were between 60 and 78 month. The respondents rating the subject's behaviors were
primarily mothers (96%) rather than fathers (4%). Al1 of the teachers participating in this study were female.
2.2. Materials
Two instruments, including two k-6 forms of the SSRS (Gresham & Elliott, 1990) were used in this study.
The Farsi versions of Social Skills Rating System-parent and teacher forms (SSRS-T, SSRS-P):
The Social Skills Rating System (SSRS; Gresham & Elliott, 1990) is a collection of non-referenced and
multirater instruments for the assessment of children's social behaviors. The components of K-6 level of SSRS
include three behavior rating scales including parent, teacher. The SSRS K-6 level employs Teacher (SSRS-T) and
Parent (SSRS-P) rating scales to sample the domains of Social Skills (Cooperation, Assertion, and Self- Control.
In addition to these subdomains, the Parent Form measures a Responsibility subdomain), Problem Behaviors
(Internalizing Problems, Externalizing Problems and Hyperactivity subdomains), and academic competence (only
the teacher form). The SSRS-T k-6 form is a 57 item rating scale comprised of 30 prosocial, 18 problem behaviors
and 9 academic competence.The SSRS- Parent form contain 55 items; there are 38 core items that belong to social
skills and 17 additional items that pertain to problem behaviors. The Frequency rating provides information on
"how often" a perceived behavior occurs in the classroom and at home (2 = very often, 1 = sometimes. and O =
never).
According to the publisher, the SSRS was normed on 4,000 children by the developer of the scales. Internal
consistency reliability finding ranged from .75 and .93. Test-retest reliability at 4 weeks was in the .80 range.
Criterion-related and construct validity were established by finding significant correlations between the SSRS and
other rating scales.

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Beheshteh Abdi / Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences 5 (2010) 11751179

2.3. Procedure
In order to select a representative sample of kindergarten centers to achieve a sample comprised of children
from families with different socioeconomic status and educational backgrounds, the researcher chose 20
kindergarten centers from different sub-areas of Tehran.
The procedure in this study included two phases: the translation and adaptation of the instruments, and the data
collection. First, a bilingual psychology professor (native Iranian) translated the original measures from English
into Farsi. To ensure accuracy of the translation, an English professor knowledgeable in psychology checked the
translated items and some modifications were made. The teachers were asked to assess the children on the SSRST within a week. After teachers completed their ratings, they sent home parental rating forms with kindergartners
and those parents with high school diploma or higher education degree completed the SSRS-P themselves. The
data was collected and analyzed by the researchers using SPSS software 16.0 for windows.
3. Results
To find whether statistically gender differences exist between social skills, problem behaviors and also
academic competence of kindergarteners, statistical comparisons of the SSRS results were conducted using
descriptive statistics and independent t-test analyses between the girls and boys based on parent and teacher's
ratings. As shown in Table1, the results showed that according to parents and teachers, girls scored higher
than boys on total and all subscales of social skills (except self- control (t = 1.87, p>.00)) based on teachers
rating as well as assertion (t = 0.92, p>.00) and also responsibility with no difference between two sexes
based on parents ratings (t = 1.87, p>.00). Conversely, teachers (t = 3.96, p<.00) and parents (t = 2.52,
p<.00) scored boys higher than girls on the externalizing and hyperactivity problem behaviours (t = 4.23,
p<.00), (t = 2.66, p<.00) teachers and parents ratings respectively. Also, teachers scored girls higher than
boys on academic competences (t = 3.90, p<.00). It should also be noted that there were no differences
between two sexes on internalizing based on teachers (t = 1.55, p=>.00) and parents (t = 0.44, p>.00)
ratings.
Table 1.Descriptive statistics and independent sample t-test results of study variables for girls and boys
Teacher Rating
Subscale and Subscales
Social Skills
Assertion
Cooperation
Responsibility
Self- Control
Total Score

Parent Rating

sex

Mean

SD

Girls
Boys
Girls
Boys
Girls
Boys
Girls
Boys
Girls
Boys

292
318
292
318
292
318
292
318
292
318

11.97
11.07
14.88
13.22
12.30
11.70
38.98
35.97

4.12
4.03
3.37
4.13
3.61
3.99
8.85
10.12

2.68*

0.00

5.38*

0.00

1.87

0.06

3.76*

0.00

Girls
Boys
Girls
Boys
Girls
Boys
Girls
Boys
Girls
Boys

292
318
292
318
292
318
292
318
292
318

2.89
3.91
2.47
2.79
3.30
4.40
8.59
11.05
3683
34.32

2.95
3.96* 0.00
3.37
2.47
1.55
0.12
2.54
2.74
4.23* 0.00
3.20
6.07
4.59* 0.00
6.88
7.55
3.90* 0.00
7.84
* are significant at p<0, 01

Mean

SD

15.73
15.52
12.98
11.78
13.80
13.35
13.00
12.04
55.54
52.96

2.73
2.82
3.21
3.29
2.88
2.84
3.18
3.26
9.36
9.42

2.89
3.91
2.47
2.78
3.30
4.40
8.60
11.05
-

2.95
3.37
2.49
2.54
2.74
3.20
6.07
6.88
-

0.92

0.36

4.45*

0.00

1.88

0.06

3.53*

0.00

3.17*

0.00

2.52*

0.01

0.44

0.66

2.66*

0.00

2.18*

0.03

Problem Behaviors
Externalizing
Internalizing
Hyperactivity
Total Score
Academic Competence

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4. Discussion
The intention of this study was to determine whether statistically significant differences exist on the social
skills, problem behaviors and academic competence of Iranian kindergarten children as assessed by Social Skills
Rating System (SSRS) Teacher and Parent Questionnaire. The authors of the SSRS (Gresham & Elliott, 1990)
found gender to be the most important characteristic of the child associated with differences in social skills. They
provided separate norms for boys and girls in the SSRS manual in the SSRS standardization study, girls were
rated higher on the social skills subscales, whereas, boys were rated higher on the problem behaviors factor. In the
present study, gender was associated with social skills and problem behaviors. The findings indicated that Iranian
female kindergartners were rated as having higher cooperation, assertion, responsibility and self- control and total
social skills (although there were no statistically significant differences between two sexes on self-control
based on teacher rating as well as assertion and responsibility with based on parents ratings). Also,
informants rated girls more on externalizing, internalizing, hyperactivity and total problems behaviors (despite the
fact that there were no statistically significant differences between two sexes on internalizing).
Finding that was largely consistent with our hypotheses and with the work of other investigators (Campbell,
1991; 2002; Margets, 2000). These differences were expected for the Iranian context. On average, girls were rated
higher on positive behaviour than boys. These gender differences likely reflect societal expectations. According to
Deaux (1998), appropriate sex-roles and sex-typed behaviors are learned, guided and transmitted by cultural
stereotypes and reactions. In the Islamic societies such as Iran, female children are expected to identify themselves
more with the motherhood role and be more cooperative in household tasks than boys are. They are also expected
to be more submissive, kind, gentle, responsive, empathic, and prosocial than boys from the very earliest age
(Nourani, 1998). It is more accepted for boys, to be outgoing and less cooperative in household tasks. So, given
stereotypic gender roles prescribing more other-oriented and well-controlled behaviour for girls than for boys, it is
possible that the pressure to display such behaviour is stronger for girls than for boys.
Problem behaviour in early childhood, characterized by internalizing, externalizing and hyperactivity has been
the focus of considerable developmental research. This focus is due largely to the observation that these problems
are highly stable across childhood among boys compare to girls. Keenan and Shaw (1997) suggest that these
gender differences are initially due to the fact that girls have a more distinct pattern of problem behaviour than
boys across the course of development. A recent analysis of data from six studies examining the trajectories of
conduct problems for boys and girls confirms this discontinuity (Broidy et al., 2003). Boys who engaged in
aggression early in development continued to display such problems, whereas girls did not.
The consistent results in scoring girls are higher than boys on social skills and lower than boys on problem
behaviors identified in different cultures have theoretical importance. It implies that social skills and problem
behaviors may not be culture-bound. Ghorbani (2004) gives reasons that collectivist and individualist values
correlated positively in both societies. This outcome was observed with previous Iranian and American samples
(Ghorbani et al, 2003), and Indian (Sinha & Tripathi, 1994) and Chinese (Ho & Chui, 1994) studies have similarly
confirmed that elements of individualism and collectivism can be incorporated within the personality. Thus,
despite the cultural differences between Iran and the United States, we predicted similarities in the two cultures in
the childrens social skills and problem behaviors. Further, cross-cultural work has verified that gender differences
in prosocial responding are not limited to only a few cultures. For example, Whiting and Edwards (1973) found
that helpfulness and support giving generally were greater for girls than boys across six different cultures (Fabes
& Eisenberg, 1996).
Differences between teacher and parent rating on cooperation, self- control, assertion and responsibility of
social skills can be interpret as because parents and teachers observe different aspects of the child's behaviour it is
reasonable that their information is not equal, but can be seen as completing (Frauenglass & Routh, 1990). Parents'
reports, in fact, may improve and deepen a teacher's understanding of a child. Also, girls scored higher than
boys on academic competences. It can manifest higher academic motivation of the girl. On the other hand,
it may reflect gender roles expectations in which teachers expect more academic competence from girls
than the boys, then rate them higher, although this area needs more research.

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