A Comparative Analysis of Social Interactions of Workers with and without Disabilities in Integrated Work Sites: A Pilot Study

Abstract

The importance of social competence in the vocational success of persons with disabilities has become increasingly apparent. With the growing emphasis on real jobs in integrated settings, the intricate array of social skills and tacit rules for interactions that workers with disabilities will need emerges as a critical area for research and understanding (Chadsey-Rusch, 1986; Cheney & Foss, 1984; Greenspan & Shoultz, 1981; Kochany & Keller, 1981; Salzberg, Agran, & Lignugaris/Kraft, 1986). Specific efforts have focused on the assessment and instruction of requisite social skills and behaviors (Bates, 1980). Already the improved knowledge in this area has yielded some important steps in theoretical synthesis and model development (Gaylord-Ross, Stremel-Campbell, & Storey, 1986; McFall, 1982; Salzberg, Likens, McConaughy, & Lignugaris/Kraft, 1986). As a result of this research attention, the field has made considerable progress toward identifying both general categories and specific examples of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors in community employment settings. Mere survival in the work place, however, is not enough. True vocational success overlaps with other aspects of daily life (Halpern, 1985) and includes the type of natural interactions and relationships that are such crucial features of a high quality of life. One of the major problems in social skills research is simply defining the components of social interactions and developing appropriate measurement systems. Bellack (1983) has addressed problems in the measures employed, the assessment format, and conceptual issues. He has pointed out that social skill is not a concrete entity. As a result, the compilation of factors involved in determining the meaning and effect of interpersonal stimuli has many variations. Social skill, in other words, tends to be highly situation specific. Social competence in one setting or context does not necessarily generalize to others (Walker & Calkins, 1986), though it may generalize when you do not want it to (Horner, Bellamy, & Colvin, 1984). Higginbotham and Yoder (1982), for example, have indicated that conversational competence is dependent upon (a) the knowledge of certain social conventions, (b) the communication of culturally relevant nonverbal signals, and (c) the ways in which these signals are exchanged. This context dependency makes the valid and reliable measurement of social skills even more critical. Measuring social behavior has been conceptualized as involving three steps (Schlundt & McFall, 1985): (1) dividing the continuous stream of behavior into segments, (2) quantifying each segment, and (3) summarizing the component measures. Assessment techniques have included direct observation (Glascoe & Levy, 1985), self-report (Stephen, Norris-Baker, & Willems, 1984), naturalistic interactions (Rusch et al., 1984), role-playing tests (Bellack, Hersen, & Turner, 1978), narrative recording (Chadsey-Rusch & Gonzalez, 1988), checklists (Storey, Forte, & Gaylord-Ross, 1987), subjective social validation. The purpose of this pilot study was to gain additional understanding of social interactions in the work place. Specifically, the remainder of this paper describes an initial effort to: (a) measure the social interactions of workers with disabilities in training in community employment sites, (b) measure social interactions of workers without disabilities in the same community sites, and (c) identify the similarities and differences between the interactions of these two groups.

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