Evaluating and comparing social skills and personality characteristics in elementary school children with stuttering and their normal peers

Introduction: The purposes of this study were first to examine the relation between social skills and personality characteristics in elementary school children with stuttering and their normal peers and second to compare these variables in these two groups.Materials and Methods: 30 normal students and 30 students with stuttering recruited from elementary schools of Isfahan city were evaluated via Personality Assessment Questionnaire and Social Skills checklist.Results: Data analysis through one way analysis of variance showed that of six factors of personality evaluated in this study, self-esteem was significantly different in two groups.  The results of Pearson correlation in stuttering group revealed that there was a significant positive correlation between emotional control and dependency. However, self-esteem and self-adequacy correlated negatively with each other in this group of students. With regard to the normal group, Pearson correlation results were indicative of a significant correlation between negative world view and participation.Conclusion: In general, the results of this study indicated that because of lower communicative performance of students with stuttering as compared to normal group, they evaluate themselves negatively, and thus their self-esteem decreases. On the other hand, increased emotional control of students with stuttering through participating in various social situations may promote independency, self-esteem and self-efficacy in these children. Considering normal children, negative world view caused by whatever reason can predict their efficiency in interpersonal relationships.Keywords: Social skills, Personality characteristics, Stuttering, Self-esteem, Self-efficacy