Abstract
As inherently social beings, humans possess specialized communicative capacities, that are essential for fostering social connection and supporting both personal and collective well-being. In an increasingly technology-driven social landscape, a psychometrically sound instrument is crucial for assessing these evolving social skills, identifying individuals experiencing interpersonal difficulties, and evaluating targeted interventions over time. This paper reports the development and validation of the Multimodal Social Skills Questionnaire (MSSQ), an instrument designed to assess social skills across diverse interaction modalities, including both online and offline environments. Multimodal social skills comprise six core dimensions: Assertiveness, Receptivity, Flexibility, Authenticity, Appreciativeness, and Resilience. Across two studies, the aim was to establish the scale’s factor structure, reliability, and construct validity. In Study One (N = 322) an initial pool of 120 items was subjected to exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and iterative item reduction, resulting in a preliminary six-factor solution. In Study Two (N = 260), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) supported the refined six-factor structure. Construct validity was supported by expected patterns of convergent and discriminant correlations with established measures. Across both studies, the MSSQ showed strong internal consistency. Overall, the findings support the MSSQ as a reliable and valid instrument for assessing multimodal social skills in the evolving digital age.