A randomized effectiveness trial of individual child social skills training: six-month follow-up

BACKGROUND: Individual Social Skills Training (ISST) is a short term, individually delivered intervention (8-10 sessions) that promotes social skills in children with emerging or existing conduct problems. This study examined the effectiveness of ISST immediately and 6 months after the termination of the intervention. METHODS: The participants were 198 children (3-12 years) who were randomly assigned to ISST or practice as usual. The data were collected from parents, children and teachers. RESULTS: Findings showed positive change on most outcomes in both study conditions. However, examining the relative effectiveness of the intervention, only one positive effect of ISST emerged on parent-reported child conduct problems immediately after intervention. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that compared to the control group, ISST had limited effects in ameliorating child problem behavior. These data suggest that it is not sufficient to provide ISST when aiming to reduce conduct problems in children. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13034-014-0031-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.