Significance: Juanita has very poor social skills. Her only regular social interactions are with her parents and personal assistants. When she is not being helped, Juanita sits passively in her wheelchair and watches other children play. She never initiates conversations with anyone. Juanita's social isolation and passivity are common amongst children with disabilities. Life skills training could help Juanita and others to increase their social skills and assertiveness. However, only a quarter of students who have disabilities currently receive needed life skills training (National Collaborative on Workforce and Disability for Youth, 2002). Bloom (1990) argues that adolescents develop self-concept through their social relationships with their peers and their independence from their parents, supporting the need for life skills training. Sport is an important arena for teaching life skills because the results of one's efforts are immediately visible.
Design: A pretest-posttest control group design was used to determine the effectiveness of a 12-week, 24-session sports and life skills intervention for children with physical disabilities aged 10-19. The E group (n=21) learned social skills, assertiveness, and other life skills (team building, goal setting, positive self-talk, coping, optimism) in a classroom setting and practiced those skills while learning and playing soccer and taekwondo. The C group (n=25) did not receive an intervention. The social subscale of the Self-Perception Profile for Children (Harter, 1985) and parent and child interviews were used to assess social skills and assertiveness prior to and after the intervention. Retention of the skills was assessed 12 weeks after the intervention for the E group.
Results: Independent sample t-tests revealed that E and C groups had similar scores on the social subscale of the Harter scale at the start of the experiment (t(44)=1.88, p=.07), but that the E group was significantly higher on the social subscale at the posttest (t(44)=2.42, p=.02). Although there was no quantitative test of assertiveness, parent and athlete interviews at posttest and retention revealed that E group participants improved both social and assertiveness skills during the intervention, and they used these skills at home, at school, and in the community. Parents who were interviewed also discussed the benefits of using soccer and taekwondo to teach the social and assertiveness skills. Discussion focused on ways in which practitioners may include similar life skills lessons in physical education and sports programs.