Teacher ratings of social skill by direct observation and through interactive video

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between interactive video based teacher ratings and direct classroom observation of social skills. The behaviour of 25 randomly selected grade seven children aged between 11 and 12 years was rated by nine teachers using items from an interactive video social skills rating scale (Bain 1989). A video camera was then placed in each of the teacher's classrooms for one week to sample the actual behaviour of the target children. Measures obtained showed correlations ranging from — 0.39 to 0.77, whilst percentage agreement between rated and actual behaviour varied from 28% to 74% over the course of the study.