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Social-Emotional Predictors of Postsecondary Enrollment for Students with Disabilities

abstract: The purpose of this exploratory study was to determine which social-emotional skills may predict postsecondary enrollment for students with disabilities. Students with disabilities are less likely to enroll in any form of postsecondary education and in turn experience poorer post-education outcomes than their general education peers. Using data from the second National Longitudinal Transition Study (NLTS2), a classification tree analysis was conducted on teacher-rated social-emotional behaviors in an attempt to determine which social-emotional skills were the strongest predictors of postsecondary enrollment. Items assessing social-emotional skills were selected from the second wave of teacher surveys based on their alignment with the broad taxonomy of social-emotional skills created by Caldarella and Merrell. The results of the classification tree analysis showed that one of the selected social-emotional items, teacher rated ability to follow directions, was the most significant predictor of postsecondary enrollment for students with disabilities. In general, the results suggest that compliance and, to a lesser extent, peer-relations skills, in addition to family income, predict postsecondary enrollment for students with high-incidence disabilities. This finding suggests that social-emotional skills play an important role in postsecondary enrollment for SWD, providing support for the use of social-emotional skills interventions in improving postsecondary enrollment rates and potentially post-educational outcomes for SWD. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Educational Psychology 2011

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:asu.edu/item:9282
Date January 2011
ContributorsKaprolet, Charles (Author), Sullivan, Amanda L (Advisor), Caterino, Linda C (Committee member), Yu, Chong Ho (Committee member), Arizona State University (Publisher)
Source SetsArizona State University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeDoctoral Dissertation
Format92 pages
Rightshttp://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/, All Rights Reserved

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