Project Description:
Special Education Research on Transition Outcomes for Special Education Secondary Students: Exploration (Goal 1)
Significant attention has been directed to transition policy, services, and research since the mid-1980s. However, data continue to suggest that students with disabilities struggle in the transition from school to adult life. While these data are troubling, significant progress has been made in identifying factors that that are under the control of educational systems and that could potentially be manipulated to improve post-school outcomes. One factor that has consistently been identified by researchers in their models of effective transition services is student self-determination. Research has begun to suggest that teaching the skills associated with self-determination can promote greater involvement in transition planning and impact students participation and progress in the general education curriculum. Self-determination may also influence post-school outcomes; research has suggested that students with disabilities who leave high school with higher levels of self-determination may be more likely to achieve positive post-school outcomes. However, there are still significant gaps in the literature.
The purpose of the proposed project is begin to address the gaps by conducting secondary analyses of extant data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 (NLTS2) to explore the relations between self-determination, individual and ecological factors, and valued long-term outcomes. The project will consist of four phases. First, we will analyze the self-determination status of the nationally representative sample of students with disabilities included in NLTS2 to develop a greater understanding of the self-determination of students within and across disability categories (Study 1). This phase will explore data collected from the direct assessment of students conducted as part of NLTS2 using items from The Arcs Self-Determination Scale. Because the entire scale was not utilized in NLTS2, a foundational activity for all of the phases of the proposed project will be analyzing and defining the aspects of self-determination assessed with subset of items included using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Second, key individual and ecological factors hypothesized to be predictors of self-determination based on previous research and theory will be explored (Study 2). Individual and ecological factors at the student, family, and school program level will be defined and their relationship with self-determination explored. Third, valued long-term outcomes and the degree to which self-determination predicts them will be examined (Study 3). Valued long-term outcomes in the domains identified by IDEA equality of opportunity, full participation, independent living, and economic self-sufficiency will be defined and their relationship with self-determination explored. Fourth, the findings from previous three studies will be used to specify and test a comprehensive model of predictors and outcomes of self-determination using multi-level structural equation modeling. These analyses will enable us to explore the degree to which individual and ecological factors mediate and moderate the impact of self-determination on outcomes and will provide direction for development of theories of change for self-determination interventions and the identification of potential targets in future self-determination interventions.
