Effects of a Coworker Advocacy Program and Social Skills Training on the Social Interaction of Employees with Mild Disabilities

Abstract

The present study investigated two approaches to promoting the social interaction of five employees with mild disabilities with their nondisabled coworkers. The first approach, a coworker advocacy program, assisted coworker advocates to design and implement social activities with disabled employees; the second approach, a social skills training, taught targeted appropriate social behaviors to the disabled employees. An ABACA design was emplayed for the first three participants while a reversal order of interventions, ACABA, was used for the two other participants. Multiple measures were used: generalization probes on social interaction, social validation data, a social support questionnaire, and a quality of work life scale. The results show that the coworker advocacy program was not enough by itself to induce social interaction between disabled and nondisabled workers. Delivering social skills training to disabled workers was essential and was more powerful than the coworker advocacy program. In addition, the participants scored higher on perceived social support and quality of work life after the social skills training. The majority of coworkers and supervisors perceived the participants to be more socially interactive with their coworkers after the social skills training.