Introduction
Adolescence is a critical time of life. Behavioral problems peak during adolescence and youth periods. According to the 2016 population census, about 6 million people in Iran are 14-19 years old. Since Iran’s population is young and many adolescents are unprepared in dealing with challenging issues, the social and psychological health of adolescents as vulnerable a group is one of the main priorities of the country. Meanwhile, orphaned and abandoned adolescents living in daycare centers facing family issues and having additional problems compared with other adolescents. One of these problems is their high-risk behaviors.
High-risk behaviors include smoking, drug abuse, alcohol use, dangerous driving, and early sexual activity. These behaviors endanger the health and wellbeing of adolescents, young people, and others in the community. The results of a 2015 US national survey showed that many high school students are at risk for high-risk behaviors that are the leading cause of death among people aged 10-24 years in the United States. Research in Iran also shows the prevalence of high-risk behaviors such as smoking and using hookah, alcohol, and drugs among adolescents aged 14-19 years. It is important to address the issue of high-risk behaviors because they cause personal and social problems and accident-related deaths. 
High-risk behaviors have several determinants at different levels such as family, peers, school, and some individual and social competence. Therefore, considering the importance of the family in the development of the individual, it can be said that abandoned and orphaned children and adolescents grow up with various behavioral and emotional problems due to lack of enough social/emotional experience. Moreover, the study of some characteristics and problems of orphaned and abandoned children and adolescents compared with the children living in the family suggests that the occurrence of emotional and behavioral disorders and the tendency towards high-risk behaviors is related to lack of social/emotional competence. Thus, social competence training has been proposed by experts in this field. 
According to Felner et al. (1990), social competence has four dimensions: cognitive, behavioral, emotional, and motivational skills [20]. Some studies have been conducted on social competence training at different ages and fields. Rockhill et al. (2009) examined the role of social competence in high school students. Their results showed that social competence training reduces aggression, anxiety, depression, social maladaptation, and antisocial behavior of adolescents [21]. 
Ferreira et al. (2012) in a study evaluated the role of social and emotional competence on risky behaviors in adolescence. Their research emphasized characteristics such as empathy, cooperation, goals, and aspirations as intermediaries between social and emotional competence, substance use, tobacco use, and alcohol use. Their findings showed a significant relationship between the social and emotional competence of adolescents and the reduction of their high-risk behaviors [6]. 
Langeveld et al. (2012) and Gundersen (2010) in their study on behavioral problems in children and adolescents, found that increased social competence by reducing factors such as self-control, anger management, cooperation, and empathy could reduce their behavioral problems [22, 23]. Kim et al. (2018) also reported similar results [24]. Haight et al. (2010) examined the effect of mental health intervention on children and adolescents aged 7-15 years living in boarding schools. Their results showed that the experimental group which received social work intervention had a significant improvement in mental health and some behaviors compared with the control group [25]. 
Based on the literature, many studies have been conducted on the effectiveness of social competence and its related skills separately in normal and abandoned/orphaned adolescents. However, few have studied the effectiveness of social competence training on risky behaviors of abandoned/orphaned adolescents. In this regard, this study aimed to investigate the effect of teaching four dimensions of social competence on the tendency to high-risk behaviors of abandoned/orphaned male adolescents living in welfare boarding centers affiliated to the Iranian Welfare Organization.
Materials and Methods
This is a quasi-experimental study with a pre-test-post-test design. The study population consists of all male adolescents living in welfare boarding centers located in Sabzevar and Mashhad cities, Iran. There was only one welfare boarding center in Sabzevar named Sobhan, which took care of 15 abandoned/orphaned male adolescents aged 12-18 years. All of them were entered into the study and assigned to the experimental group. For the control group, the adolescents in Golestan-E Ali center located in Mashhad City were selected based on a convenience sampling method. There were 29 boys in this center. Of these, 15 who had met inclusion criteria were randomly selected and assigned as controls. 
The inclusion criteria were being 12-18 years old, willing to participate in the study, having a normal state of consciousness, lacking a history of mental illness, and living in the boarding centers for at least one year. The exclusion criteria were unwillingness to continue participation, transfer, or discharge from the center.
Data collection tools were a demographic form and Iranian adolescents risk-taking scale (IARS) developed by Zadeh Mohamadi et al. (2008) [30]. It has 38 items rated based on a 5-point Likert-type scale from 1= completely disagree to 5= completely agree. Before distributing the questionnaires, the purpose of the study was explained to the participants and they were assured of the confidentiality of their information. Then, informed consent was obtained from them. After determining the time of the classes, according to the previous plan, the social competence training package was given to the intervention group for 2 months in 12 sessions, while the control group received only first aid training. Table 1 lists the content of the training sessions. 
The intervention protocol was according to the social competence model of Felner (1990) and prepared by researchers under the supervision and approval of qualified faculty members [20]. The questionnaires were completed before and after the intervention. One month after the intervention, the tendency towards high-risk behaviors was compared between the two groups. The collected data were analyzed in SPSS V. 22 by using multivariate ANCOVA, independent t test, paired t test, Shapiro-Wilk test, and Levene’s test.
Results
The mean age of the control group was 14.40 years and of the experimental group 14.47 years. Most study participants had a middle school education. In the experimental group, most boys were abandoned (3.73%); while in the control group, all three types of bad supervisions were equally distributed (33%). Also, most of them had entered welfare boarding centers from childhood. The Shapiro-Wilk test was used to check whether the distribution of variables was normal. The results showed a normal distribution before and after the intervention (P>0.05). The mean and standard deviation of the scores of a tendency towards high-risk behaviors and its subscales for the experimental and control groups are presented in Table 2. As can be seen, post-test scores decreased compared with the pre-test scores.
According to the results shown in Table 3, the intervention had a significant effect on the post-test scores of IARS and its dimensions (P<0.05). Based on Eta squared values, it could explain 40%, 23.8%, 20.2%, 18.1%, 13.3%, 29.2%, and 20.9% of changes in the tendency to dangerous driving, violence, smoking, drug abuse, alcohol use, sexual behavior, and the opposite sex, respectively. Results of multivariate ANCOVA presented in Table 3 showed that the social competence training program had a significant effect on the subjects’ tendency towards high-risk behaviors (F=24.08, P<0.001). The Eta squared value for overall IARS score showed that 47.1% of changes in their tendency can be explained by social competence training. Hence, the main hypothesis of this study was confirmed.



Discussion
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of social competence training on the tendency towards high-risk behaviors in adolescent boys living in welfare boarding centers in Iran. The first finding of this study was that social competence training had a positive effect on reducing the tendency towards dangerous driving. This finding is consistent with the Shults et al. (2018) study results regarding the social competence training for correcting adolescents’ behaviors in driving [31], and Foreman et al. (2018) study results regarding appropriate interventions on the behavioral and cognitive dimensions of subjects for reducing dangerous driving [32]. 
The second finding of the study was that social competence training reduced the tendency towards violence in the subjects. This result is in agreement with the results of Van Vugt et al. (2013), Matson et al. (2009), Kõiv (2012), and DeWall et al. (2011) who indicated the use of social skills training, managing emotions and having positive relationships with peers as protective factors against behavioral problems, especially aggression [35-38].
Our results also showed that social competence training reduced the tendency toward cigarette smoking. This finding is consistent with Onyechi et al. (2017) and Margueritte et al. (2018) results. They reported the effectiveness of training on side effects and health problems caused by smoking and tobacco use and the correction of attitudes towards smoking [41, 42]. Social competence training could also reduce the tendency towards drug abuse and alcohol use. This is consistent with the findings of Khaledian et al. (2014), Bahreini-Borujeni et al. (2014), McDonald et al. (2017), Wang et al. (2018), and Mohammad-Najar et al. (2017) [46-50]. Those studies reported the effectiveness of teaching each of the components of social competence in reducing the tendency to use drugs in adolescents and addicts. Also, it is consistent with the results of Chapman et al. (2018) who stated that to prevent the early onset of alcohol and marijuana use and reduce their risk, effective prevention in adolescence through increasing awareness of their complications, and related injuries are very important [51].
Social competence training could also reduce the tendency toward sexual intercourse and behavior. This finding agrees with the results of Perez-Cuevas et al. (2016) and Jeong et al. (2017). They showed that educational intervention and increasing the awareness of high-risk sexual behaviors in students could have a positive effect on reducing their tendency toward unprotected sex and sexually transmitted diseases [54, 55]. Overall, social competence training could reduce the tendency of adolescents towards high-risk behaviors. Weiss et al. (2017) also reported that teaching social skills leads to improved mental, emotional, and behavioral health performance in students [59]. Burrus et al. (2018) in their study concluded that educational interventions for vulnerable people, especially abandoned/orphaned adolescents living in boarding centers, can prepare them for adulthood and ultimately lead to behavioral changes for having health and long-term wellbeing and to reduce their risky behaviors [60]. 
Social competence is the ability of a person to deal effectively with the daily challenges of life, to try to maintain mental wellbeing, and to express it consistently and positively. Impaired social competence often causes many psychological and social problems, such as drug and alcohol abuse, delinquency, antisocial behavior, and maladaptation. In this regard, the role of the social worker as the leader of the group is of special importance. According to Bandura’s theory of social learning, the behavior of social workers in teamwork is considered a pattern of behavior. Group education itself can have a positive effect on increasing adaptability, because the gathered individuals in a group and having similar problems are effective in reducing stress and the negative mood of adolescents and, thus, increasing acceptance of the problem and coping with it.
There were some limitations in conducting this study. The study tool Iranian Adolescents Risk-Taking Scale (IARS) was a self-report instrument, so the results may not be very accurate. Limited sample size, sampling method, and problems due to the asking sensitive questions are other limitations of this research. Moreover, because the research was done using a convenience sampling method, it is recommended that the generalization of the results to the adolescents living in other welfare boarding centers should be done with caution. It is suggested that due to the increasing population of abused and orphaned children and adolescents, workshops and group education should be held to reduce their high-risk behaviors in the study welfare centers and other day/night care centers.
Conclusion
Social competence training has a significant effect on reducing the tendency towards high-risk behaviors in abandoned/orphaned adolescents. Due to insufficient positive feedback from their successful performance, they have a feeling of low competence and self-esteem, and thus are more likely to be exposed to high-risk behaviors. A social competence training program can be used as a method for reducing their tendency towards high-risk behaviors.
Ethical Considerations
Compliance with ethical guidelines
This study has ethical approval code obtained from the Research ethics Committee of University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences. Prior to study, a written informed consent was obtained from the participants. To observe ethical principles, an educational package was also prepared and presented to the controls. Participants were assured of the confidentiality of their information.
Funding
This study was extracted from the master thesis of Ms. Sima Alizadeh approved by the Department of Social Work, University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences.
Authors' contributions
Investigation: Sima Alizadeh; Conceptualization, editing & review: Ghoncheh Raheb; Methodology:  Zahra Mirzaei, Data analysis: Samaneh Hasanzadeh.
Conflicts of interest
The authors declared no conflict of interest.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank all employees and adolescents living in boarding schools under the supervision of Welfare Organization in Sabzevar and Mashhad cities for their valuable cooperation.