Purpose of the Friendship Group Program
10% to 15% of children experience serious and chronic peer difficulties in elementary school, including rejection, social exclusion, friendlessness, and victimization. A majority of these children exhibit social skill deficits and problematic social behaviors that alienate peers. Their problems then escalate as negative reputations develop and children face peer exclusion or mistreatment. Children with learning problems are at high risk for peer difficulties; conversely, peer difficulties intensify academic problems by increasing children’s feelings of distress and decreasing their learning engagement.
The Friendship Group program is a small group social skills training program that improves children’s social behavior and peer relations and thereby reduces distress and enhances positive school engagement.
Research Supporting the Friendship Group Approach to Building Social Skills and Improving Peer Reputations
Given the general importance of social skills and positive peer relations to school success, educational researchers have argued that schools should provide multiple levels of support to help students develop social competence. It is generally expected that approximately 15% of students will need additional social skill training in small groups to address their social skill deficits and peer difficulties (Bierman & Powers, 2009). A number of randomized-controlled trials have demonstrated the utility of social skills training programs for children with specific social problems (Lochman & Gresham, 2009).
The Friendship Group program is built upon and guided by this evidence base. It provides social skill training, using classroom peers as partners. Social skill training sessions are designed to: (1) promote skill acquisition by presenting models (e.g., using stories, discussions, examples, modeling videotapes) that define, explain, and illustrate the target skill, and (2) enhance skill performance by providing opportunities to practice the skills in the context of positive reinforcement and corrective performance feedback. In one review of the literature on this approach to social skill training, Gresham, Cook, Crew, and Kern (2004) examined 6 meta-analyses conducted between 1987 and 2003, involving 338 studies and more than 25,000 children between 3 and 18 years of age. Social skill training emerged as an effective intervention strategy for students with emotional and behavioral problems, with an overall mean effect size of .29 (range = .19-.40), corresponding to an improvement rate of 65% among the children who received social skill training compared to 35% among children in the control groups. On the basis of these studies, Gresham et al. (2004) further concluded that social skill training was effective for children who varied substantially in terms of their specific emotional and behavioral problems, including a wide range of externalizing and internalizing problems.
The design of Friendship Group is also informed by an extensive research base suggesting that including peer partners in social skill training sessions and using naturalistic peer activities and games for skill practice strengthens intervention impact, relative to individual training or a reliance on role-play skill practice alone (see Bierman & Powers, 2009 for a review). Two separate studies have shown that the peer partners who participate in the social skill training sessions benefit themselves — becoming more positively responsive socially, and more accepting of others (Bierman, 1986; Bierman, Miller, & Stabb, 1987). Because rejection processes involve transactions between unskilled children and their peers, training peers to be more positively responsive enhances the classroom climate and peer reputation of the target child in ways that add to the benefits of skill training.
The length of total Friendship Group intervention (14-22 weeks) follows the recommendation of McIntosh, Vaughn, and Zaragoza (1991). McIntosh et al. (1991) reviewed 22 social skill training programs serving children with learning disabilities, and founda significant relationship between the amount of training children received and intervention effects; programs with the highest impact provided over three times more social skill training than programs that did not produce significant effects.
Research Evaluating the Friendship Group Program
The Friendship Group SST has been developed over the past 30 years, with the content based on a series of randomized trials with different child populations who varied both developmentally and in terms of the behavioral basis of their peer difficulties. The lessons draw from manuals evaluated in randomized trials that focused on disliked, withdrawn 5th – 6th graders (Bierman, 1986; Bierman & Furman, 1984), rejected-aggressive 2nd – 3rd graders (Bierman et al., l987), and aggressive 1st – 4th graders (Bierman, Greenberg, & CPPRG, 1996; CPPRG, 1999, 2002). In each of these studies, significant effects were documented in the context of the randomized trial on both improved social skills and social behaviors, and also on the peer nominations and/or ratings provided by the peer partners.
Friendship Group Logic Model
Friendship Group is a tier 2 intervention, designed to provide intensive small group therapeutic support to build social-emotional skills for children demonstrating significant difficulties in the area of social interaction and peer relationships.
Friendship Group is designed to link specifically with PATHS, but it can also be used with other tier 1 programs or as a stand-alone tier 2 program.
For additional Friendship Group information, please click here.
References
Bierman, K.L. (2004). Peer rejection: Developmental processes and intervention strategies. New York: Guilford. [Reprinted in Italian Il bambino rifiutato dai compagni: Cause, valutazione e interventi.]
Bierman, K. L. & Furman, W. (1984). The effects of social skills training and peer involvement on the social adjustment of preadolescents. Child Development, 55, 151-162.
Bierman, K. L. (1986). Process of change during social skills training with preadolescents and its relation to treatment outcome. Child Development, 57, 230-240.
Bierman, K. L., Miller, C. M., & Stabb, S. (1987). Improving the social behavior and peer acceptance of rejected boys: Effects of social skill training with instructions and prohibitions. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 55, 194-200.
Bierman, K. L., Greenberg, M. T. & CPPRG. (1996). Social skill training in the FAST Track program. In R. DeV. Peters & R. J. McMahon (Eds.), Preventing childhood disorders, substance abuse, and delinquency (pp. 65-89). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
CPPRG (1999). Initial impact of the Fast Track prevention trial for conduct problems: I. Child and parent effects. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 67, 631-647.
CPPRG (2000). Merging universal and indicated prevention programs: The Fast Track Model. Addictive Behaviors, 25, 913-927.