Effects of social skills training among freshman undergraduate nursing students: a randomized controlled trial

Objectives. The goal of the study was to evaluate the effects of workshops focused on the training of communication skills. The next goal was to determine the inter-correlations between different social skills, in four situations: in experimental/ control group of participants and before/ after social skills training intervention. Materials and Methods. Experimental design type 2x2, with experimental and control group was used. Students from four Croatian universities were involved in the Social Skills Training (SST). The sample consisted of 193 students, from which N =132 in the control group and N = 61 in the experimental group. Training of Social Skills (used as an independent variable) was conducted only in the experimental group, while the Social Skills Checklist (SSC) scores were the dependent variable. Results. Some expected significant differences in certain SSC in the experimental group suggested positive effects of Social Skills Training. Similar insights provide the trend of intercorrelations, which are generally higher in the experimental group in the situation after SST. However, unexpected differences in certain social skills between experimental and control groups were found in the initial measurement. Conclusion. SST was found to be effective for students’ social skills learning. Reasonable explanations of the results obtained are given in terms of the assumption that SST could also partially reflect the attitudes towards SST, while the SSC need not be identical to real acquired social skills.