social competence and its related factors in high school students: a cross-sectional study

Introduction: social competence can help adolescents achieve effective social interactions and establish and maintain successful relationships with peers and society.objective: the purpose of this study was to determine the status of social competence and its related factors in high school students in rasht city, iran.materials and methods: in the cross-sectional analytical study, 491 high school students in rasht were selected by multi-stage random cluster sampling. the study tool was a two-part questionnaire: the demographic characteristics of the participants and the social competence questionnaire. descriptive statistics, 1-way analysis of variance (anova), the pearson correlation coefficient, independent t test, and multiple linear regression were used for statistical analysis.results: of 491 students, 65.4% were female, 63.1% were the first child of the family, and 94.3% had normal sleep amount. also, 94.1% of students lived with their parents. their mean social competence was at the desired level (261.7±8.31, total score: 47-329). there was a significant relationship between school grade point average (r=0.271, p=0.001), duration of internet use (r=-0.103, p=0.022), and students’ sleep amount with social competence based on 1-way anova test (p=0.005). based on multiple linear regression analysis, a high-grade point average was associated with increased social competence (b=7.54, 95% ci; 5.43 to 9.78, p=0.001) and female gender (b=-6.71, 95% ci; -13.15 to -0.26, p=0.04), being the second child compared to the first (b=-8.19, 95% ci; -14.48 to -1.90, p=0.011), insomnia (b=-19.07, 95% ci; -36.14 to -2.01, p=0.029) and parental divorce and living with father (b=-46.47, 95% ci; -81.95 to -10.99, p=0.01) were associated with low social competence (r2=0.16). conclusion: these results can help managers plan educational and training organizations and promote parents’ awareness to eliminate everyday barriers and develop social competence in adolescents.