title: Should schools expect poor physical and mental health, social adjustment, and participation outcomes in students with disability?
abstract: The literature on whether students with disabilities have worse physical and mental health, social adjustment, and participation outcomes when compared to their peers without disabilities is largely inconclusive. While the majority of case control studies showed significantly worse outcomes for students with disabilities; the proportion of variance accounted for is rarely reported. The current study used a population cross-sectional approach to determine the classification ability of commonly used screening and outcome measures in determining the disability status. Furthermore, the study aimed to identify the variables, if any, that best predicted the presence of disability. Results of univariate discriminant function analyses suggest that across the board, the sensitivity of the outcome/screening tools to correctly identify students with a disability was 31.9% higher than the related Positive Predictive Value (PPV). The lower PPV and Positive Likelihood Ratio (LR+) scores suggest that the included measures had limited discriminant ability (17.6% to 40.3%) in accurately identifying students at-risk for further assessment. Results of multivariate analyses suggested that poor health and hyperactivity increased the odds of having a disability about two to three times, while poor close perceived friendship and academic competences predicted disability with roughly the same magnitude. Overall, the findings of the current study highlight the need for researchers and clinicians to familiarize themselves with the psychometric properties of measures, and be cautious in matching the function of the measures with their research and clinical needs.
authors.affiliation: School of Occupational Therapy and Social Work, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia.
authors.forename: Sharmila
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Vaz
authors.affiliation: School of Occupational Therapy and Social Work, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia.
authors.forename: Reinie
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Cordier
authors.affiliation: School of Occupational Therapy and Social Work, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia; School of Education and Communication, CHILD programme, Institution of Disability Research Jönköping University, Jönköping, Sweden.
authors.forename: Marita
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Falkmer
authors.affiliation: School of Occupational Therapy and Social Work, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia.
authors.forename: Marina
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ciccarelli
authors.affiliation: School of Occupational Therapy and Social Work, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia; School of Pharmacy, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia.
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Parsons
authors.affiliation: James Cook University, College of Healthcare Sciences, Occupational Therapy, Townsville, Queensland, Australia.
authors.forename: Tomomi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: McAuliffe
authors.affiliation: School of Occupational Therapy and Social Work, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia, Australia; Rehabilitation Medicine, Department of Medicine and Health Sciences (IMH), Faculty of Health Sciences, Linköping University & Pain and Rehabilitation Centre, UHL, County Council, Linköping, Sweden.
authors.forename: Torbjorn
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Falkmer
mesh_terms: D001315:Australia; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D006233:Persons with Disabilities / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D008603:Mental Health; D012574:Schools; D012917:Social Adjustment; D058992:Social Participation; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires