The Relationship Between Abuse within the Family and Social Skills of Turkish Senior Primary School Children

I investigated instances of child abuse that second-stage primary school children experienced in the family environment and their social skills. The research sample consisted of 347 children aged between 12 and 14 who attended primary education 6th, 7th, and 8th grades in the province of Konya, Turkey. To collect the data I used the Matson Evaluation of Social Skills with Youngsters (MESSY) Scale, which was developed by Matson, Rotatory, and Hessel in 1983, adapted to Turkish and tested for reliability and validity by Bacanlı and Erdoğan (2003); and the Domestic Child Abuse Scale-B Form (Bekçi, 2006). I found that physical abuse, directing to crime and sexual abuse, neglect and emotional threat, educational abuse, lack of rules and lack of support had a positive relationship with negative social skills. There was a negative relationship between supporting development and negative social skills.