Planning, Expectations and Post-secondary Graduation
among Youth with Emotional Disturbance
500-word, Layperson Summary of Proposal for Honor’s Thesis
Student: Kelsey Grant
Faculty Mentor: Mason G. Haber, PhD
Post-secondary education outcomes for youth with Emotional Disturbance (ED),
emotional or behavioral disorders that significantly and persistently impact functioning in
primary and secondary school settings (Forness & Knitzer, 1992), are historically poorer than
those among their peers, including those in other disability groups (Wagner & Newman, 2012).
Increasingly, efforts to identify solutions to this problem are focusing on resources thought to
support successful transition to adulthood among youth facing psychosocial adversity, known as
“emerging adult resources” (Masten, Obradović, & Burt, 2006) or alternatively, in the literature
on youth with ED, positive youth development assets (PYDAs; Carter, Austin, & Trainor, 2011).
Two PYDAs of particular interest are planning, youths’ abilities to set goals for themselves and
participate in activities that help them reach their goals, and future expectations, or youths’
optimism about their long-term future prospects, including the possibility of graduating from a
post-secondary educational program. These assets have been shown to be predictive of a wide
range of outcomes in the transition to adulthood among both youth generally as well as certain
disability populations (Carter et al., 2011; Masten et al., 2004), but at present never among youth
with ED.
It is important to understand how the planning and future expectations predict outcomes
both separately and in conjunction with one another, especially among youth with disabilities
such as ED. Discrepancies between planning and future expectations may be especially
important in predicting outcomes, though the nature of these predictive relationships is unclear in
disability groups (Owens, Goldfine, Evangelista, Hoza, & Kaiser, 2007). Some prior studies have
shown that positive future expectations and planning ability are highly related and jointly
predictive of better outcomes in the general population (e.g., MacLeod & Conway, 2005).
However, youth with disabilities have been found to hold artificially high future expectations and
poor planning (Heath & Glen, 2005), which could result in poor selection and frustration in
achieving goals (Owens et al., 2007). Conversely, the effect of having low expectations while
having high planning ability, also known as defensive pessimism, has been shown to produce
superior outcomes in non-disabled groups (Martin, Marsh, & Debus, 2001), and in some cases
may produce superior outcomes among youth with disabilities as well, though this is currently
unknown (Owens et al., 2007).
The present study examines predictive relationships of planning and future expectations
with post-secondary graduation, using a nationally representative sample of students with ED
provided by the National Longitudinal Study-2, a study following students with disabilities from
adolescence into adulthood (Wagner & Newman, 2012). The effects of planning and future
expectations on post-secondary graduation will be assessed using polynomial regression, a
statistical procedure that shows the effect of each individual variable on an outcome, as well as
the effect of each possible discrepancy between two variables and outcomes (e.g., high planning
and low future expectations and vice versa; Shanock et al., 2010). Implications for intervention
programs to support the transition for youth with ED will be discussed.
References
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