TY - JOUR ID - 119997 TI - Social Skills and Student Organization Activities: A Cross-sectional Study Among Medical Students of Tehran JO - Journal of Iranian Medical Council JA - JIMC LA - en SN - 2645-338X AU - Mahmoodi, Seyed Mohammad Hossein AU - Khamoushi, Simin AU - Faraji, Maryam AU - Khosravi, Niloofar AU - Jalali Nadoushan, Amir Hossein AD - Mental Health Research Center, Tehran Institute of Psychiatry, Faculty of Behavioral Sciences and Mental Health, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran AD - Student Research Committee, Faculty of Medicine, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran Y1 - 2020 PY - 2020 VL - 3 IS - 3 SP - 123 EP - 130 KW - cross-sectional studies KW - Medical students KW - Organizations KW - social skills DO - N2 - AbstractBackground: 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.  UR - http://www.jimc.ir/article_119997.html L1 - http://www.jimc.ir/article_119997_1f988236acb83c262c45d3115892266b.pdf ER -