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The Social Aptitudes Scale: looking at both “ends” of the social functioning dimension

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Abstract

Purpose

Dimensional approaches are likely to advance understanding of human behaviors and emotions. Nevertheless, it is unclear whether instruments in psychiatry capture variability at the full spectrum of these dimensions. We aimed to investigate this issue for two scales assessing distinct aspects of social functioning: the Social Aptitudes Scale (SAS), a “bidirectional” scale constructed to investigate both “ends” of social functioning; and the social Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL-social), a “unidirectional” scale constructed to assess social problems.

Methods

We investigated 2512 children and adolescents aged 6–14. Item response theory was used to investigate on which range of the trait each scale captures information. We performed quantile regressions to investigate if correlations between SAS and CBCL-social vary within different levels of social aptitudes dimension and multiple logistic regressions to investigate associations with negative and positive clinical outcomes.

Results

SAS was able to provide information on the full range of social aptitudes, whereas CBCL-social provided information on subjects with high levels of social problems. Quantile regressions showed SAS and CBCL-social have higher correlations for subjects with low social aptitudes and non-significant correlations for subjects with high social aptitudes. Multiple logistic regressions showed that SAS was able to provide independent clinical predictions even after adjusting for CBCL-social scores.

Conclusions

Our results provide further validity to SAS and exemplify the potential of “bidirectional” scales to dimensional assessment, allowing a better understanding of variations that occur in the population and providing information for children with typical and atypical development.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Psiquiatria e Medicina Legal, Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre, Ramiro Barcelos, 2350, Room 2202, Porto Alegre, Brazil

    Luiza Kvitko Axelrud, Diogo Araújo DeSousa, Gisele Gus Manfro, Ana Cláudia Knackfuss, Luis Augusto Rohde & Giovanni Abrahão Salum

  2. National Institute of Developmental Psychiatry (INPD, CNPq), São Paulo, Brazil

    Luiza Kvitko Axelrud, Diogo Araújo DeSousa, Gisele Gus Manfro, Pedro Mario Pan, Jair de Jesus Mari, Eurípedes Constantino Miguel, Luis Augusto Rohde & Giovanni Abrahão Salum

  3. Departamento de Psiquiatria, Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP), São Paulo, Brazil

    Pedro Mario Pan & Jair de Jesus Mari

  4. Departamento de Psiquiatria, Universidade de São Paulo (USP), São Paulo, Brazil

    Eurípedes Constantino Miguel & Luis Augusto Rohde

Authors
  1. Luiza Kvitko Axelrud
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  2. Diogo Araújo DeSousa
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  3. Gisele Gus Manfro
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  4. Pedro Mario Pan
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  7. Eurípedes Constantino Miguel
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  8. Luis Augusto Rohde
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  9. Giovanni Abrahão Salum
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Correspondence to Luiza Kvitko Axelrud.

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Conflict of interest

Dr. Axelrud, Dr. DeSousa, Dr. Manfro, Dr. Pan, Dr. Knackfuss, Dr. Mari, Dr. Miguel, and Dr. Salum report no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest. Dr. Rohde has received Honoraria, has been on the speakers’ bureau/advisory board, and/or has acted as a consultant for Eli-Lilly, Janssen-Cilag, Novartis, and Shire in the last 2 years. He receives authorship royalties from Oxford Press and ArtMed. He also received travel awards for taking part of 2014 APA and 2015 WFADHD meetings from Shire. The ADHD and Juvenile Bipolar Disorder Outpatient Programs chaired by him received unrestricted educational and research support from the following pharmaceutical companies in the last 3 years: Eli-Lilly, Janssen-Cilag, Novartis, and Shire.

Funding

This work was funded through research grants by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq, Brazil), the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES, Brazil), the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP, Brazil), and the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio Grande do Sul (FAPERGS, Brazil). All of them are public institutions of the Brazilian government developed for scientific research support. Funding sources have no involvement in this study, including no role in data collection, analysis, and interpretation of the data.

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Axelrud, L.K., DeSousa, D.A., Manfro, G.G. et al. The Social Aptitudes Scale: looking at both “ends” of the social functioning dimension. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol 52, 1031–1040 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-017-1395-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-017-1395-8

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