The comparison of self-esteem and social skills in deaf and blind students at the intermediate level in the city of Karaj

The purpose of this research is compare self-esteem and social skills in deaf and blind students at the intermediate level in the city of Karaj during 2009-2010 academic years. For this purpose, 36 deaf and 36 blind students were selected using the simple random sampling method. The data were collected using Cooper Smith’s self-esteem questionnaire and the positive and negative social skills’ test or Inderbitzen and Foster’s list of social skills with the help of the blind and the deaf assistants. Then, the findings by using the skills of descriptive and inferential statistics and the SPSS software were analyzed. The results indicated that self-esteem in the groups of deaf and blind students were not different. The second theory of the research indicating the existence of a difference in the blind students’ social skills and the deaf ones were not substantiated. Also, as the social skill’s positive behavior is increased, self-esteem is increased as well and on the contrary, it indicates the existence of a positive significant correlation between the positive social skill’s behavior and self-esteem.