Longitudinal change in parent postsecondary expectations for youth with disabilities.
Anne V Kirby, Laura Graham Holmes, Andrew C Persch
PMID 31990211WHAT IT FOUND
Parent expectations for youth with disabilities were moderately stable over two years, but shifts were associated with later independence.
Negative shifts consistently linked to less independent outcomes; positive shifts were inconsistent and sometimes linked to less independent living.
Key findings
01Parent expectation ratings between waves were moderately correlated, with coefficients from 0.43 to 0.59.
02Between 10.4% and 26.1% of parents made a directional shift, moving from probably or definitely will to probably or definitely will not, or the reverse.
03Negative shifts in expectations were associated with lower likelihood of postsecondary education, living on own, working for pay, and not receiving SSI; for postsecondary education, youth were less than a fifth as likely to attend after a negative shift.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The analyzed sample was only about a third of the total NLTS2 sample, and exclusion was related to older age, free or reduced meals, and not being White, so the findings may not generalize to all U.S. youth with disabilities. The study used existing survey data, so the authors did not control recruitment, question design, or dropout, and they used pairwise deletion for missing data. At Wave 2, parents were not asked expectation questions about outcomes the youth had already achieved, which compounds missing data. The data are dated and may not reflect current experiences of parents and youth. The study used parent expectations generically and did not examine differences by mother or father. The paper is a secondary analysis of survey data, not a study that assigned families to an intervention.
Declared interests
The authors reported no conflicts of interest. The article is tagged as research supported by NIH extramural funds and non-U.S. government research.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the associations as proof that helping parents become more optimistic will improve youth outcomes. This was an observational analysis of existing survey data, and positive expectation shifts were not consistently linked to better postsecondary outcomes.