The role of Greenspan's (1979, 1981a) three social awareness components (sensitivity, insight, and communication) in the employment success of adolescents with mild mental retardation was examined. First, a valid and reliable set of social awareness descriptors was developed using a five-step development process. Second, special educators used these social awareness descriptors and two measures of employment success (employment stability and work performance) to rate 125 adolescents with mild mental retardation. Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) revealed no statistically significant differences in the social awareness of adolescents with higher or lower levels of employment stability. However, a statistically significant difference in the social awareness of participants with higher or lower work performance ratings was found. Post hoc descriptive discriminant analysis indicated that the communication component of social awareness contributed the most to the separation between adolescents with high or low work performance.
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