Agresividad y habilidades sociales

Un estudio preliminar con adolescentes de escuelas públicas

Abstract

Adolescence has always been a subject of study in the field of social sciences and it has gained increasing importance in the 21st century. Great progress has been acknowledged in the fields of health and education as a result of public policies; however, the prevention of violence and related behaviour, such as aggressiveness, remains a challenge. Aggressiveness and social skills were the object of study of this work. The aims were: a) to describe social skills and aggressive behaviour in 12-to-17-year-old adolescents who attend school in San Miguel de Tucumán (Ar- gentina) and who live in low socioeconomic status urban areas; and b) to compare social skills and aggressive behavior according to age, sex and family type.

Method: this is a descriptive, non-experimental and cross-sectional research with adolescents who attend urban state schools from San Miguel de Tucumán (Argentina). The sample consisted of 752 cases, selected in a non-probabilistic and incidental fashion. The instruments used were the Socialization Battery for adolescents (BAS-3, Silva and Martorell), the Antisocial Behavior Questionnaire (CC-A, Casullo Adaptation) and a sociodemographic survey. The results indicate that we can relate social skills’ styles and one of its dysfunctions, aggressiveness, to contextual variables such as sex, age and family type. The results provide information to run intervention programmes that prevent aggressive behaviour, by assessing the ability to control impulses and respect for social norms. This will guarantee ways of healthy interpersonal relations; and therefore, will enable the adolescent’s inclusion in the reference group.