A STUDY TO EXPLORE PRESENCE OF SOCIAL SKILLS AMONG HEARING IMPAIRED STUDENTS

Present study attempted to explore presence of social skills amonghearing impaired students taking education from government specialeducation schools and to compare different level of social skills based ondifferent demographic variables. It is a descriptive study in nature andsurvey method is used to collect the data. Population of study is hearingimpaired children living in division Faisalabad and Lahore. Sample ofN=200 hearing impaired students are selected through convenient samplingtechnique. Responses of social skills are taken from mothers as mothershave better knowledge of proficiencies of their hearing impaired children’ssocial skills. Children’s age group was 05-20 years. Age range of motherswas 25-55 years. Social skills checklist was used to as tool of the study forcollection of data. It is a mixed method approach and statistical measureswere made via frequency distribution, t-test and ANOVA. Results of currentstudy clearly depicted that 82% hearing impaired students have low level ofsocial skills and 18% hearing impaired students have best level of socialskills. Current study also find out that there is significant difference in socialskills of students on the basis of living area and children age and there is nosignificant difference in presence of social skills in hearing impairedstudents based on mother’s working status (house wife and job holders) andmothers education level. Study also demonstrated that there was positivecorrelation among presence of social skills in hearing impaired students andtheir age. The study concluded that teachers should focus on individualdifferences while teaching social skills to hearing impaired children andshould adopt different teaching methods and teaching strategies for everystudent. It was also recommended that job holder mothers should manage their time table and must spare their proper time for their special children tomake them beneficial and socially adjusted child of community.