Exploratory study of social skills and behavior problems in children from kindergarten

Abstract

Kindergarten aims to fully develop children and can help them expand their social skills. Social skills are sets of behaviors that contribute to social competence and foster good relationships with others. A good social skill repertoire in childhood acts as a protection factor for development. This study has as general objective to characterize the social skills and the behavior problems in children of early childhood education, and it has as specific objectives to verify the behavior problems that they present, if there are differences between sexes regarding these variables, and the associations between social skills and behavior problems. A hundred children's parents or legal guardians and ten children's teachers will participate in this study. These children are three to five years and eleven months old, and they belong to public child education schools in a city in the interior of the state of São Paulo. This is a prospective, cross-sectional, in which children will be assessed by different sources. The instruments used will be: Social Behavior Scale for Preschool Children (PKBS-BR) and Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). The results will be listed according to the propositions of each instrument and performed the analyzes relevant statistics through the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). It is hoped that the results can collaborate with the planning of prevention programs of a universal character in social skills destined to the formation of teachers and parents, orienting them in how to help in the development of these with the children. We emphasize that this study is linked to two larger projects, one of which is supported by FAPESP and another by CNPq. (AU)