Research and Results
Significant Increases in Fifth- and Sixth-Graders’ Social Competence
Holsen, I., Smith, B., & Frey, K. S. (2008). Outcomes of the social competence program SECOND STEP in Norwegian elementary schools. School Psychology International 29(1), 71–88.
Holsen, I., Iversen, A. C., & Smith, B. (2009). Universal social competence programme in school: Does it work for children with low socio-economic background? Advances in School Mental Health Promotion 2(2), 51–60.
Two recent journal articles describe a study of the effects of the Norwegian version of the SECOND STEP program, Steg for Steg, on fifth-and sixth grade students. Steg for Steg became available in 1998, a year after the Norwegian National Core Curriculum incorporated explicit teaching of social skills into the country’s educational standards. Most Norwegian schools chose to meet this goal through implementing standardized curricula, and the Steg for Steg program was the most widely used, eventually being distributed to more than 60 percent of Norwegian elementary schools.
Norwegian researchers took advantage of this widespread dissemination to carry out a study of the effects of the program under normal, everyday conditions of implementation. Their large-scale evaluation of Steg for Steg included 1,153 students from 55 fifth- to seventh-grade classrooms in 11 schools.
Data for the study was obtained directly from students through in-class surveys. Since the program was so widely used in Norway, the researchers employed an “age cohort design” for the study. This approach is a quasi-experimental design applicable when it is not possible to randomly assign schools to intervention/control conditioned groups.
The first set of findings from the study was published in the journal School Psychology International in 2008. Those results showed that the program resulted in significant increases in social competence for both boys and girls across the fifth and sixth grades, the two years examined in the study. In addition, boys in sixth grade who had received the program reported lower levels of externalizing problem behavior compared to control students.
The second publication of results from the evaluation was in an article in Advances in School Mental Health Promotion in summer 2009. In this study, researchers examined whether the program’s effects differed according to students’ socioeconomic status (SES). Students were divided into two groups, and program effects for the students reporting the lowest SES were compared to the outcomes for the students reporting middle and highest SES.
The study found that after receiving the Steg for Steg program, the low-SES students reported disproportionate improvements in social competence, school performance, and satisfaction with life, compared to their middle- and upper-SES peers. The finding that the program was especially beneficial for lower-SES students is encouraging given the disadvantages often faced by those students.
