| Tara McLaughlin
University of Florida
Functional Profiles and Young Children's Social Competence: Exploring Relationships in the Pre-Elementary Education Longitudinal Study (PEELS) Data Set
Young children's social competence has been related to later school performance and well-being. For children with disabilities, promoting social competence often requires targeted supports or interventions. Social competence has been identified as a desired preschool outcome that should be measured and reported under the provisions associated with the Individuals with Disabilities Education and Improvement Act (IDEA, 2004). Studies examining predictors associated with early childhood special education outcomes often use primary IDEA disability category data, however, concerns about the usefulness of disability category as a predictor variable, particularly in nationally representative large-scale data sets, have been raised. Quantifying children's functional ability has been recommended as an alternative to disability category. The International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health for Children and Youth (ICF-CY; World Health Organization, 2007) offers a framework to describe and quantify children's functional ability. The proposed study combines an ICF-CY related functional approach with person-oriented analytic techniques to create empirically derived latent-classes representing groups of children with a similar profile of functional ability. The purpose of the proposed study is to explore these functional child profiles as an alternative to disability categories as a predictor of social competence outcomes using data from the PEELS nationally representative data set. Moreover, interactions between contextual factors and functional profiles in relation to children's social competence will be examined. Findings from the proposed study will help inform policy recommendations related to characterizing disability and function and inform the use of person-oriented analyses to identify malleable child factors associated with social competence.
Back to Funded Dissertation Grants Page |