Table 14. Youth's reported perceptions of relationships with friends, by disability category
| Relationships | Learning disability | Speech/ language impair- ment |
Mental retar- dation |
Emo- tional distur- bance |
Hearing impair- ment |
Visual impair- ment |
Ortho- pedic impair- ment |
Other health impair- ment |
Autism | Trau- matic brain injury |
Multiple disabili- ties |
Deaf- blind- ness |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Percent / standard error | ||||||||||||
| Youth feel cared about by friends | ||||||||||||
| A lot | 52.9 | 50.9 | 50.4 | 42.9 | 48.0 | 62.1 | 59.8 | 49.6 | 37.5 | 56.7 | 59.5 | 49.2 |
| (4.25) | (4.68) | (5.86) | (4.61) | (6.14) | (6.16) | (5.62) | (4.62) | (7.17) | (8.92) | (7.25) | (9.12) | |
| Quite a bit | 34.0 | 30.6 | 18.4 | 30.4 | 31.9 | 27.6 | 26.2 | 27.2 | 31.8 | 27.0 | 21.5 | 29.6 |
| (4.03) | (4.31) | (4.54) | (4.28) | (5.72) | (5.68) | (5.04) | (4.11) | (6.90) | (7.99) | (6.07) | (8.33) | |
| Some | 9.7 | 12.1 | 13.0 | 17.9 | 15.3 | 8.7 | 8.5 | 13.3 | 23.9 | 6.0 | 8.6 | 16.9 |
| (2.52) | (3.05) | (3.94) | (3.57) | (4.42) | (3.58) | (3.20) | (3.14) | (6.32) | (4.28) | (4.14) | (6.84) | |
| Very little or not at all | 3.4 | 6.4 | 18.2 | 8.8 | 4.8 | 1.5 | 5.5 | 9.9 | 6.8 | 10.3 | 10.4 | 4.7 |
| (1.54) | (2.29) | (4.52) | (2.64) | (2.63) | (1.54) | (2.61) | (2.76) | (3.73) | (5.47) | (4.51) | (2.61) | |
| Response to question "Can you find a friend when you need one?" | ||||||||||||
| Yes | 79.0 | 78.3 | 70.5 | 77.0 | 81.6 | 80.3 | 78.6 | 73.8 | 47.2 | 58.6 | 79.2 | 72.5 |
| (4.05) | (4.14) | (6.48) | (4.93) | (5.22) | (5.98) | (5.57) | (4.89) | (8.28) | (9.59) | (7.22) | (8.83) | |
| Sometimes | 19.6 | 21.4 | 25.2 | 20.1 | 14.5 | 19.7 | 20.6 | 22.9 | 45.1 | 37.7 | 19.3 | 22.4 |
| (3.95) | (4.13) | (6.17) | (4.70) | (4.74) | (5.97) | (5.49) | (4.68) | (8.25) | (9.43) | (7.02) | (8.25) | |
| No | 1.4 | 0.3 | 4.3 | 2.9 | 3.9 | 0.1 | 0.8 | 3.3 | 7.7 | 3.7 | 1.5 | 5.1 |
| (1.15) | (0.52) | (2.89) | (1.95) | (2.61) | (0.44) | (1.21) | (1.99) | (4.43) | (3.69) | (2.16) | (4.34) | |
| Confidence that youth "can make friends easily" | ||||||||||||
| Confident | 73.3 | 66.0 | 70.3 | 71.2 | 69.5 | 58.7 | 62.0 | 63.2 | 38.8 | 61.5 | 67.6 | 59.2 |
| (4.41) | (4.77) | (6.56) | (5.31) | (6.23) | (7.49) | (6.61) | (5.37) | (8.05) | (9.44) | (8.33) | (9.84) | |
| Not sure | 23.0 | 30.2 | 21.3 | 22.7 | 23.4 | 37.7 | 28.5 | 32.2 | 33.9 | 37.9 | 27.5 | 35.8 |
| (4.19) | (4.63) | (5.88) | (4.90) | (5.73) | (7.37) | (6.14) | (5.20) | (7.82) | (9.41) | (7.95) | (9.60) | |
| Not at all confident | 3.8 | 3.8 | 8.4 | 6.2 | 7.0 | 3.6 | 9.5 | 4.7 | 27.4 | 0.6 | 4.8 | 5.0 |
| (1.90) | (1.92) | (3.97) | (2.82) | (3.46) | (2.84) | (3.99) | (2.35) | (7.36) | (1.49) | (3.82) | (4.38) | |
|
NOTE: Response categories "very little" and "not at all" have been collapsed for reporting purposes. SOURCES: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Special Education Research, National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 (NLTS2), Wave 2 youth telephone interview/mail survey, 2003; youth in-person interviews, 2002 and 2004. | ||||||||||||
