Project Activities
This study will use a longitudinal design to examine the malleable promotive and protective resilience factors that may predict academic and socio- emotional functioning across the transition from elementary to middle school.
Structured Abstract
Setting
The research will take place in racially and socioeconomically diverse school districts in the District of Columbia, Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, and Kentucky.
Sample
Participants will be 300 5th grade students with ADHD, with equal numbers of boys and girls, and their parents and teachers. Potential participants will receive a full ADHD evaluation to ensure the sample consists of students with ADHD, regardless of whether they have had a previous diagnosis. Researchers will use a consensus approach to confirm (or disconfirm) an ADHD diagnosis through ratings from at least one parent and one teacher using symptom rating scales, impairment rating scales, and a semi-structured parent diagnostic interview. In addition, approximately 10 adolescents with ADHD will participate in a youth advisory board.
Factors of interest are specific promotive and protective mechanisms, which include school connectedness, social support, and student attitudes and engagement, and specific risk mechanisms such as executive dysfunction.
Research design and methods
Researchers will follow 300 5th grade students with ADHD, across 2 cohorts, for 2.5 years as they transition from elementary school to middle school. Researchers will collect five waves of data spaced equally apart—in fall and spring of 5th grade, fall and spring of 6th grade, and fall of 7th grade—to examine change in risk factors; potential resilience factors across student attitudes and engagement, social support, and school connectedness; and academic and socio-emotional functioning. They will administer full batteries at the initial and final timepoint, and a shortened battery during the intervening data collection time points.
Control condition
Due to the nature of the research design, there is no control condition.
Key measures
This study will use a multi-informant, multi-method approach to data collection. Student academic outcome measures will include school records of grades, the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test, and parent and teacher report on the Homework Performance Questionnaire and Adolescent Academic Problems Checklist. Student socio-emotional outcome measures will include parent and student report on the Behavioral Assessment System for Children and teacher and parent report on the Impairment Rating Scale. Parent and teacher report on the Barkley Deficits in Executive Functioning Scale: Short Form will measure student executive functioning. Key student-report measures to assess student attitudes and engagement are the Social-Emotional Health Survey System and the Patterns of Adaptive Learning Survey: Revised. To assess social support and school connectedness, researchers will use student report on the Friendship Quality Questionnaire, Peer Relationships Scale, and the California Healthy Kids Survey Resilience Assessment.
Data analytic strategy
Researchers will fit latent growth curve models to examine the type and degree of change in academic performance and socio-emotional skills. Researchers will use exploratory analyses to examine differences in resilience pathways for boys and girls with ADHD and use an exploratory multivariate latent curve model to simultaneously examine prospective reciprocal relations between constructs, both between students and within students over time.
People and institutions involved
IES program contact(s)
Project contributors
Products and publications
Products: This study will result in an understanding of the relation between promotive and protective resilience factors and academic and socio-emotional functioning in middle school students with ADHD. Products will also include a publicly shared final dataset, peer-reviewed publications and presentations, and reports and articles for various education stakeholders.
ERIC Citations: Find available citations in ERIC for this award here.
Questions about this project?
To answer additional questions about this project or provide feedback, please contact the program officer.
