The goal of our research was to determine the effects of social skills training on professional dancers, whether social skills training can improve the relationship of a dance pair, whether an improved relationship affects competitive success and whether the personality structure affects the effectiveness of the social skills training. The purpose of the research was to create a social skills training through which dancers in such workshops and lectures could better form their own expectations regarding training and competitive performance, i.e. form expectations that are more focused on unstructured, creative and experiential work. The topic of the thesis is whether it is possible to improve the interpersonal relationship of a dance pair through the social skills training, and moreover, how or in what way to carry out such a training and successfully incorporate it into their already existing training model. In accordance with the purpose of the study, we have set five hypotheses. The study included 21 dance pairs that decided to participate on a voluntary basis; among them, there were 21 female and 21 male dancers of Latin and Standard dances, aged between 18 and 42, and who are members of the Slovenian national team. We measured personality characteristics (with the big five questionnaire) and social skills (with the interpersonal skills questionnaire) and constructed our own questionnaire, entitled MY ASSASSEMENT OF SOCIAL SKILLS (MASS) – i.e. a questionnaire with 19-items. A subject fills them out by self-assessment on a 5-point ordinal Likert scale. The questionnaire measures the quality of the relationship of the dance pair on the basis of self-assessment of the social skills. The results were obtained between September 2016 and February 2017.
The results of the dimension of social skills in the experimental and control group before and after the experiment showed significant statistical differences in the dimension of social sensitivity before and after the social skills training. In both cases, a higher amount of social sensitivity was found in dancers from the control group. Comparing the differences between the second and the first time (change = value after training – value before training) for social skills, for the experimental and control group regarding their dimensions, two significant statistical differences have been showed, i.e. in the emotional expressivity and emotional sensitivity. In both dimensions, the members of the experimental group advanced, meanwhile the members of the control group regressed. Factorization of the new questionnaire, i.e. My Assessment of Social Skills (MASS), has shown that it is a single-factor structure of the questionnaire. The Pearson correlation coefficient between the original and the revised form of the self-assessment questionnaire on interpersonal skills is high and statistically significant (especially the original and the revised version, both before and after the social skills training), which confirms that they measure the same construct, therefore, we decided that in all subsequent publications we would use only the revised version containing 12 items. The control and the experimental group differ in the self-assessment of interpersonal relationships of the pair before the social skills training, i.e. in the control group the dancers better assessed their interpersonal relationships. After the social skills training, the dancers in the experimental group better assessed the interpersonal relationships, meanwhile in the dancers of the control group a change in the assessment did not occur. Furthermore, with the discriminant analysis we found that changes in the dimensions of social skills and self-assessment of relationships do not differentiate between the two groups, which can be attributed to a relatively small number of participants in the research. An overview of the change of social skills and self-assessment of relationships after the social skills training has shown that changes occurred in the self-assessment of the relationship, emotional expressivity and skills of emotional expression, which have increased after the training. Paired test has shown when comparing the differences between the arithmetic means before and after the social skills training for social skills and self-assessment of relationships for all dance pairs together that during the second measurement there was an improved self-assessment of the relationships and a lower level of social expressiveness. With the linear regression analysis, we found that the difference in the competitive performance of the dance pairs (2nd time – 1st time) or the competitive performance of the 2nd time across the whole sample is affected by the sum of changes in the self-assessment for the male dancer and the female dancer and the difference between the self-assessments in the experimental group. The impact of the difference in the mutual self-assessment of the social skills in both dancers of the dance pair (the sum of both values and the self-assessment scale) in the competitive performance. The greater the difference in the self-assessment of the social skills of the dance pair, the greater the difference of the competitive success of the dance pair. This effect is statistically significant, if we analyse both groups together. Comparing the changes in the dimensions of social skills in the whole sample showed that there are no differences in social skills between female and male dancers. It turned out that the female dancers in the control group have made progress in the emotional control and social expressiveness, while the male dancers in the control group during the two time points strongly regressed in these two dimensions. However, there was no difference in the experimental group. In order to test, whether the personality structure affects the effectiveness of social skills training of the top dancers, we have verified it with the linear regression analysis, which showed a statistical significance in the dimension of social control. This means that changes in the dimension of social control can be predicted based on the personality structure. The change prediction model of emotional expressivity based on personality traits is not statistically significant, but the impact of perseverance on the enhanced emotional expressivity is. The change prediction model of emotional sensitivity based on personality traits is also not statistically significant. We found that the dominance has a positive impact on the progress of this characteristic. The change model of the emotional control is not statistically significant as well. The emotional control has nevertheless a positive impact on the progress of this skill. The same goes for the changes in social expressiveness, but with this skill we have found that the sincerity scale exerts a positive influence on the progress of this skill. Also, the change prediction model of social sensitivity is not statistically significant, but the sincerity scale has also a positive impact on the progress of this skill.
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