Practice Profile: Social Skills Training for Preventing Antisocial Behavior of Youth

Using meta-analytic techniques, Beelmann and Lösel (2021) analyzed the effect of social skills training interventions on the prevention of antisocial behavior in youth. To identify eligible studies, electronic searches of PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, PubPsych, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Full Text, ERIC, Web of Science, and PubMed were conducted. A combination of search terms referring to the type of intervention (e.g., social skills training, prevention), the intervention field (e.g., antisocial behavior, delinquency), age of target group (e.g., juvenile, adolescent), and the study design (i.e., randomized) was used. Following this search, the references of all eligible studies were screened for further eligible research.

To be eligible for inclusion, a study had to 1) contain an evaluation of a social skills training program that was specifically designed to prevent antisocial behavior and crime in youth, 2) compare an intervention and control group in a randomized controlled design (RCT), 3) have an age range between 0 and 18 years, 4) be preventive, such as a universal prevention program or a targeted prevention for at-risk groups, 5) assess at least one outcome for antisocial behavior or crime, and 6) be in either English or German up to the year 2015. Studies were excluded that either 1) evaluated social skills training combined with additional programs or program components (such as parent or teacher training), 2) compared two different programs without an untreated control, or 3) evaluated programs for already adjudicated juveniles.

A total of 98 reports that included 31,140 youths were identified as eligible for inclusion. Some reports contained more than one independent study or separate data for two or more subgroups (such as two different age groups or risk level) and were treated as separate data sets, which resulted in a total of 113 studies and 130 RCT comparisons between an intervention and a control group. The RCT comparisons were the final basic unit of analysis. Most reports were of interventions from the United States (74 reports), but also included interventions from Germany (8 reports), Canada (6 reports), Israel (2 reports), the Netherlands (2 reports), and Austria, China, England, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland (1 report each). The average sample size of a comparison was 263 participants, but these ranged between 13 and 6,733 participants.

For the CrimeSolutions review of this meta-analysis, the focus was on the 119 comparisons (derived from 98 reports) that examined the effects of skills building interventions on youths’ antisocial behavior at the immediate postintervention. Of these 119 comparisons, 101 were group training interventions, 10 were individual training, 5 were a combination of both group and individual training, 2 were self-help conditions, and 1 was individual supervision and care. A total of 54 interventions were indicated (for youths who were already exhibiting antisocial behaviors), 36 were universal (for all youths in a neighborhood or school) and 29 were selective (for youths with specific risk factors, such as low socioeconomic status).

The effect size was calculated as the standardized mean difference. The inverse of the squared standard error was used to weight effect sizes.