Social Skills and Student Organization Activities: A Cross-sectional Study Among Medical Students of Tehran

Background: Lack of effective training and practice of social skills in childhood in many communities necessitates finding costless solutions to improve these skills in adulthood. Healthcare staff may especially benefit from such advantages regarding their professional needs. Organized activity involvement can improve children social competence; such relationship, however, is not well known in adults. As the first step, the association of university student organization activity involvement and social skills level was evaluated in medical students. Methods: In this analytical cross-sectional study, a total of 205 female and male medical students from any grade and ethnicity, were selected by stratified random sampling from medical schools of two main universities of medical sciences of Tehran, the capital of Iran. Social competence of students was assessed by using Social Skills Inventory along with history of involvement in student organization activities and outside university group activities. Results: A statistically significant difference between social skills scores of students with and without a history of involvement in university student organization activities was detected (p=0.028). In students with such history, a positive correlation was found between social skills scores and total hours of participation in activities (r=0.206, p=0.035). A significant difference was also found between social skills scores of students involved and not involved in group activities outside the university (p <0.001). Conclusion: Medical students taking part in organized activities had significantly more social skills scores —the more active they were, the more social competence they reported. Future longitudinal researches can investigate causality and may suggest organized activity involvement for adults who experienced no effective social skills training in childhood which is a common problem in developing communities.