Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Vol. 13, No. 1, 1984

Behavior Problems of Handicapped Adolescent Female Students Douglas Cullinan, ~ Robert M. Schultz, 2 Michael H. Epstein, 3 and Jerry F. Luebke 4

Received September 21, 1983

Adolescent girls aged 12 through 16 years, identified as either educable mentally retarded, behaviorally disordered, learning disabled, or nonhandicapped, were rated by their teachers on the Behavior Problem Checklist. Analysis o f these ratings revealed significant differences f o r pupil category, Behavior Problem Checklist dimension, and category-by-dimension interaction. Behaviorally disordered students showed a greater degree o f maladjustment than the retarded and nonhandicapped students on all f o u r checklist dimensions, and exceeded the learning disabled on three dimensions (not Personality Problem). Implications f o r further research and special educational practices based on the present findings are discussed.

INTRODUCTION Historically, one o f the most underserved groups o f handicapped individuals has been adolescents (Halpern, 1979). With the passage o f Public Law 94-142, many local educational systems have been faced with the need to begin or enlarge programs for special education students in secondary schools. Such efforts have often proceeded without the benefit o f data con*Department of Learning, Development, and Special Education, Northern Illinois University. Received Ed.D. from University of Virginia. Main interest is the handicapped adolescent. 2Department of Learning, Development, and Special Education, Northern Illinois University. Received Ms.Ed. from Northern Illinois University. Main interest is emotionally disturbed children. 3Department of Learning, Development, and Special Education, Northern Illinois University. Received Ed.D. from University of Virginia. Main interest is educational programming. 4Department of Learning, Development, and Special Education, Northern Illinois University. Received Ms.Ed. from Northern Illinois University. Main interest is educational research. 57 0347-2891/84/0200-0057503.50/0 © 1984Plenum Publishing Corporation

58

Cullinan, Schultz, Epstein, and Luebke

cerning characteristics and needs of these students. Service delivery models for high school students often have been based on elementary school resource and self-contained programs, with little regard for the special features, expectations, and administrative structure of the typical secondary school (Kokoszka and Drye, 1981). If more appropriate training programs and service delivery models are to become available, the knowledge base concerning handicapped adolescents must be increased. One characteristic of many students with mild to moderate handicaps (learning disabled, educable mentally retarded, and behaviorally disordered) is a variety of social, emotional, and personal behavior problems (Hallahan and Kauffman, 1982). An instrument commonly used in the assessment and investigation of children's behavior problems is the Behavior Problem Checklist (BPC; Quay and Peterson, 1975). The BPC consists of 55 statements of various adjustment problems. A teacher who is familiar with the child's behavior patterns rates each item as either "no problem," a "mild problem," or a "severe problem." Factor analyses of the BPC (Quay, 1977, 1979; Quay and Peterson, 1975) have consistently identified three major dimensions of childhood maladjustment: Conduct Disorder, Personality Problem, and Inadequacy-Immaturity. A fourth dimension, Socialized Delinquency, has been found in some studies of juvenile populations. Studies with both normal and behaviorally deviant children have demonstrated that the BPC is a reasonably valid and reliable measure of maladaptive behavior (Quay, 1977, 1979). Investigations using teacher-completed BPCs have confirmed that educationally handicapped and normal students differ on these dimensions of maladjustment (Cullinan et aL, 1979; McCarthy and Paraskevopoulos, 1969; Grieger and Richards, 1976; Gajar, 1979). For instance, Cullinan et aL (1979) compared teacher-completed BPCs of age-matched elementary and middle school boys identified as either normal, learning disabled, educable mentally retarded, or behaviorally disordered. They found that students with educational handicaps could be discriminated from normal pupils on the Personality Problem dimension, and that the Conduct Disorder dimension discriminated the behaviorally disordered group from all others. Too few girls were identified to be included in that study. Epstein et al. (1983) analyzed teacher-completed ratings of age-matched normal and behaviorally disordered adolescents. Both male and female subjects were included. Behaviorally disordered adolescents were rated as showing significantly more maladjustment on the Conduct Disorder and Personality Problem dimensions than normal students. No significant effects involving sex were found, suggesting that male and female adolescents with and without behavior disorders exhibit similar degrees of maladaptive b~havior. Other studies of handicapped groups on the BPC (e.g., Cullinan et aL,

Handicapped Girls' Behavior Problems

59

1981; Gajar, 1979; Grieger and Richards, 1976; McCarthy and Paraskevopoulos, 1969) have focused upon younger students. No study to date has examined the behavior problems of normal and handicapped adolescent females exclusively. Perhaps because of the substantially greater number of males exhibiting a variety of learning and behavior problems (e.g., Cullinan et aL, 1981; Eme, 1979), research into patterns of maladaptive behavior among females has been relatively rare. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship between categories of exceptionality and the dimensions of the BPC for adolescent females.

METHOD Subjects The subjects for this study were nonhandicapped (NH) and mildly handicapped female adolescents attending public schools in Illinois and Wisconsin. The handicapped students were identified under state and local criteria as eligible for special education services for the educable mentally retarded (MR), behaviorally disordered (BD), or learning disabled (LD) in resource or special class settings. A total of 154 NH, 109 MR, 88 BD, and 77 LD female students were rated by their respective teachers, with no more than 10 students rated by each teacher. From among these potental subjects, 45 age-matched quartets (each comprised of a NH, MR, BD, and LD student) were constructed; if several girls in a category made equally good matches, one was selected randomly. Thus, a total of 180 subjects were included, 45 in each category. The subjects ranged in age from 144 to 203 months (X = 174.7, SD = 15.6).

Procedures From regular and special education teacher-completed Behavior Problem Checklists, four behavior problem dimension scores were derived for each subject according to instructions in the manual (Quay and Peterson, 1975). The score for each dimension was the total items on that dimension that were checked as either a "mild" or "severe" problem. These data were then analyzed through the use of a 4 (category) x 4 (dimension) repeated measures ANOVA (Kirk, 1968), with dimension being the repeated measure. Follow-up Newman-Keuls mean comparisons (Kirk, 1968) were made where appropriate.

60

Cullinan, Sehultz, Epstein, and Luebke

Table I. Means and Standard Deviations of Category-by-Dimension Subgroups on the Four Behavior Problem Checklist Dimensions° Conduct disorder

Personality problem

Inadequacyimmaturity

Socialized delinquency

Category

X

SD

X

SD

X

SD

X

SD

Nonhandicapped Mentally retarded Behaviorally disordered Learning disabled

1.96 3.09 9.80 3.13

3.49 3.73 4.82 4.05

2.56 3.84 6.62 5.40

3.11 3.44 3.69 3.70

1.11 1.60 3.27 2.09

1.54 1.88 2.15 1.94

0.73 0.76 3.11 1.11

1.39 1.33 2.01 1.58

an = 45 for each subgroup.

RESULTS The ANOVA revealed significant main effects for category, F(3, 176) = 42.00 p < 0.001, and for dimension, F(3, 528) = 70.18, p < 0.001. There was a significant category-by-dimension interaction effect, F(9, 528) = 11.19, p < 0.001. Table I presents means and standard deviations of the four problem dimensions for each category. Further analyses of the categories at each dimension identified significant simple main effects (Kirk, 1968) for each dimension: Conduct Disorder, F(3, 176) = 35.05, p < 0.001; Personality Problem, F(3, 176) = 11.65, p < 0.001; Inadequacy-Immaturity, F(3, 176) = 10.77, p < 0.001; and Socialized Delinquency, F(3, 176) = 22.59, p < 0.001. These effects were in turn explored by means of Newman-Keuls follow-up tests (Kirk, 1968), with alpha set at 0.01 for the collection of pairwise comparisions among means within each dimension (see Table II). On the Conduct Disorder, Inadequacy-Immaturity, and Socialized Delinquency dimensions, BD girls exceeded all the other categories, while the MR, LD, and NL groups did not differ among themselves. On the Personality Problem dimension, BD girls exceeded NH and MR, but not LD, girls. The LD girls showed more problems than their NH peers, and the MR group was not significantly different from LD or NH groups (see Figure 1). DISCUSSION The significant main effect for dimension indicates that teachers marked more items on some BPC dimensions than on others. Because there are a different number of items in each dimension, it is difficult to interpret this finding. More meaningful is the main effect for category. Consistent with findings reviewed earlier involving other ages, categories, and/or sexes, the mildly and moderately handicapped female adolescents were rated by their teachers as having more behavior problems than nonhandicapped peers.

°p < 0.01.

Socialized delinquency Nonhandicapped versus Mentally retarded versus Learning disabled versus Behaviorally disordered versus

Inadequacy-immaturity Nonhandicapped versus Mentally retarded versus Learning disabled versus Behaviorally disordered versus

Personality problem Nonhandicapped versus Mentally retarded versus Learning disabled versus Behaviorally disordered versus

--

Nonhandicapped

0.03 --

0.49 --

1.28 --

1.13 --

Mentally retarded

--

0.38 0.35

--

0.98 0.49

--

2.84 ~ 1.56

1.17 0.04 --

Learning disabled

2.00

a

2.38" 2.35 a

2.16 a 1.67 a 1.18 a

w

1.22

4.06 a 2.78 °

7.84 ° 6.71 a 6.67 ° -

Behaviorally disabled

II. Mean Differences between Student Category Groups on Conduct Disorder, Personality Problem, InadequacyImmaturity, and Socialized Delinquency Dimensions

Conduct disorder Nonhandicapped versus Mentally retarded versus Learning disabled versus Behaviorally disordered versus

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Handicapped Girls' Behavior Problems

63

The category-by-dimension interaction indicates that the relative standing of NH, LD, MR, and BD students changed across dimensions of the BPC. Adolescent BD girls could be clearly discriminated from all other categories by their excess number of problems on the Conduct Disorder, Inadequacy-Immaturity, and Socialized Delinquency dimensions. Furthermore, the BD group exceeded the NH and MR groups on the Personality Problem dimension. However, on this dimension the BD students did not show significantly more problems than the LD, and both groups exceeded NH girls on the Personality Problem dimension. The present results show some similarity to earlier studies of handicapped students that used the BPC as a dependent measure. As in the present study, (1) BD students (Cullinan et aL, 1979; Epstein et al., 1983) exceeded nonhandicapped and other handicapped student groups on the Conduct Disorder dimension; (2) BD and LD groups exceeded the nonhandicapped on the Personality Problem dimension (Cullinan et al., 1979, 1981; Epstein et aL, 1983). Yet interesting differences with past findings also emerged in the present study: (1) Among younger males (Cullinan et al., 1979), MR students exceed NH students on all dimensions except Socialized Delinquency, but the present female adolescent MR and NH groups showed no significant differences on any dimension. (2) BD subjects in the present study significantly exceeded the other groups on Inadequacy-Immaturity and Socialized Delinquency; such differences were not found in earlier studies of younger BD boys (Cullinan et al., 1979) or adolescent BD males and females (Epstein et aL, 1983), although differences on these dimensions closely approached significance. Results of the present study point to further research directions. Generally, there are severe information gaps regarding handicapped students who are adolescent, female, and especially both. We need an increased volume of scientific research on the characteristics, problems, and other foundation information about these students, as well as assessment, intervention, and other special education considerations. More specific to the study of social and emotional problems of students is the need to utilize other assessment modes to check the present findings. Although the Behavior Problem Checklist is reasonably valid and reliable (Quay, 1977, 1979), and teacher-completed checklists are commonly used to assess childhood disorders (Mash and Terdal, 1981), it would be useful to validate results by, for example, systematic direct observation of adolescent females in high school classrooms. Additionally, the present results have noteworthy educational implications. While most experienced teachers of mildly handicapped students become familiar through exposure and otherwise with the behavior characteristics of males in special education, the substantially smaller number of

64

Cullinan, Schultz, Epstein, and Luebke

females may prevent knowledge of female student characteristics. Present results point out that adolescent female behaviorally disordered and learning disabled students show quite substantial problems, just as their male peers do. In fact, extrapolation from other studies suggests that compared to same-sex nonhandicapped peers, behaviorally disordered girls may show even greater problems than behaviorally disordered boys. Clearly, training programs for prospective teachers of adolescent behaviorally disordered and learning disabled students should include information on working with female students, including information on their social and emotional adjustment problems and appropriate techniques for dealing with them.

REFERENCES Cullinan, D., Epstein, M. H., and Dembinski, R. J. (1979). Behavior problems of educationally handicapped and normal pupils. J. Abnorm. Child PsychoL 7: 495-502. Cullinan, D., Epstein, M. H., and Lloyd, J. (1981). School behavior problems of learning disabled and normal girls and boys. Learning DisabiL Quart. 4: 163-169. Eme, R. F. (1979). Sex differences in childhood psychopathology. PsychoL Bull. 86: 574-595. Epstein, M. H., Cullinan, D., and Rosemier, R. A. (1983). Behavior problems of behaviorally disordered and normal adolescents. Behav. Disorders. 8: 171-175. Gajar, A. (1979). Educable mentally retarded, learning disabled, emotionally disturbed: Similarities and differences. Except. Children 45: 470-472. Grieger, R. M., and Richards, H. C. (1976). Prevalence and structure of behavior symptoms among children in special education and regular classroom settings. J. School Psychol. 14: 27-38. Hallahan, D. P., and Kauffman, J. M. (1982). Exceptional Children, 2nd ed., Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Halpern, A. S. (1979). Adolescents and young adults. Except. Children 45: 518-523. Kirk, R. E. (1968). Experimental Design: Procedures for the Behavioral Sciences, Brooks/ Cole, Belmont, CaliL Kokoszka, R., and Drye, J. (1981). Toward the least restrictive environment: High School LD students. J. Learning Disabil. 14: 22-23, 26. Mash, E. J., and Terdal, L. G. (eds.) (1981). Behavioral Assessment of Childhood Disorders, Guilford, New York. McCarthy, J. M., and Paraskevopoulos, J. (1969). Behavior patterns of learning disabled, emotionally disturbed, and average children. Except. Children 36: 69-74. Quay, H. C. (1977). Measuring dimensions of deviant behavior: The Behavior Problem Checklist. J. Abnorm. Child PsychoL 5: 277-287. Quay, H. C. (1979). Classification. In H. C. Quay and J. S. Werry (eds.), Psychopathological Disorders of Childhood, 2nd ed., Wiley, New York. Quay, H. C., and Peterson, D. R. (1975). Manual for the Behavior Problem Checklist. Unpublished manuscript.