title: Predicting school failure from information available at birth.
abstract: Information available from birth certificates was used to predict the psychological and educational status of approximately 1,000 randomly sampled first-grade children. The purpose of the research was to explore the feasibility of using birth certificate information as a cost-effective mechanism to identify children who were likely to need special educational services at public school entry. Multiple-regression and discriminant-function analyses revealed the following factors to be important in predicting psychoeducational status: birth order, race, educational status of the mother, month prenatal care began, survivorship of older siblings, and the child's legitimacy.
mesh_terms: D000124:Achievement; D001719:Birth Certificates; D001722:Birth Order; D001724:Birth Weight; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D005865:Gestational Age; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D007859:Learning Disabilities / Q000175:diagnosis*; D008297:Male; D008423:Maternal Age; D009657:North Carolina; D011247:Pregnancy; D011295:Prenatal Care; D011336:Probability; D011581:Psychological Tests; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors