An Epidemiological Study of Learning Disabled Adolescents in Secondary Schools: Behavioral and Emotional Status From the Perspective of Parents and Teachers

Abstract

In recent years, professionals in the field of learning disabilities have begun to address the impact of learning disabilities on adolescents and young adults. Although substantial attention has been directed to the manifestations of learning disabilities in elementary school age populations, the significantly different and increasingly complex demands on adolescents both in and out of school necessitate the development of systematic research on this population. The University of Kansas Institute for Research in Learning Disabilities has collected a broad array of data to form an epidemiological data base on LD adolescents and young adults. Data have been collected from learning disabled, low-achieving, and normal-achieving adolescents as well as from their parents and teachers. In addition, information from the environmental setting of the LD adolescents which pertains to interventions applied on behalf of the student, relationships with others, conditions under which he/she operates and support systems available for his/her use has also been collected. These data have been considered in relation to data on specific learner characteristics to gain a more complete profile of the older LD individual. Research results presented in Research Reports 12 through 20 detail findings from this comprehensive epidemiology study conducted during 1979-80 by the Institute. It is important for the reader to study and view each of these individual reports in relation to this overall line of research. An understanding of the complex nature of the learning disability condition only begins to emerge when each specific topic or finding is seen as a partial, but important, piece of a larger whole.