Short report: Correlates of behaviours that challenge in children with intellectual disability in special education settings.
Teaching friendly, helpful behaviors and lowering parent stress can cut challenging acts in students with ID.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Beqiraj et al. (2022) asked 71 children with intellectual disability and their teachers to fill out rating scales.
The team wanted to know which child traits and family factors go hand-in-hand with hitting, screaming, or self-injury in special-education classrooms.
What they found
Kids who shared, helped, and played well had fewer challenging behaviors.
Boys showed more outward aggression than girls.
Mothers who felt high stress rated their children as having more behavior problems.
How this fits with other research
Dworschak et al. (2016) saw the same pattern in a much larger group of 1,629 students.
Jennett et al. (2003) pooled 22 older studies and also flagged male sex and communication deficits as red flags.
Balboni et al. (2020) found a twist: among people with severe ID and multiple diagnoses, better daily-living skills sometimes came with more problem behavior.
The difference is setting: Giulia’s sample lived in institutions, while Lorena’s kids attended school, so adaptive skills may protect in classrooms but not in residences.
Why it matters
When you see a child with ID acting out, first look for pro-social moments you can strengthen.
Teach sharing, turn-taking, and helping peers; these simple acts work like a shield.
Also ask mom how she is doing—high parent stress is a signal to add family support, not just behavior plans.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Understanding the correlates of behaviours that challenge (CB) can help in both identifying children with intellectual disabilities (ID) at risk of developing CB and designing support programmes and interventions. AIMS: This study explores the correlates of CB exhibited by children with ID in special educational settings in the UK. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: Data on behaviours that challenge were provided by educators of 71 children with ID. Additional measures of adaptive and pro-social behaviours, maternal anxiety, depression, and stress, and demographic variables were included in the cross-sectional binary logistic regression analyses. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: Results showed that pro-social behaviours of children with ID were associated negatively with overall CB (OR=0.72, 95% CI [0.62, 0.84], p < 0.001), stereotyped (OR=0.81, 95% CI [0.70, 0.94], p = 0.005), self-injurious (OR=0.80, 95% CI [0.70, 0.90], p < 0.001), and aggressive/destructive behaviours (OR=0.79, 95% CI [0.69, 0.90], p < 0.001). Stereotyped behaviours were associated with lower adaptive skills (OR=0.95, 95% CI [0.91, 0.99], p = 0.026) and male gender (OR=9.20, 95% CI [1.07, 79.44], p = 0.044). Aggressive/Destructive behaviours were associated with maternal stress (OR=0.82, 95% CI [0.70, 0.97], p = 0.022), and increased maternal anxiety (OR=1.21, 95% CI [1.00, 1.47], p = 0.050) was a marginally significant predictor of self-injurious behaviours. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: The findings of this study emphasise the potential role of pro-social and adaptive behaviours, gender of children with ID, and maternal stress, as factors associated with CB in special education settings. Therefore, the present study contributes to extending the literature on correlates of CB for children with ID in special education settings while adopting an evidence-informed methodology for defining and measuring CB that facilitates replicability and allows for comparisons across findings of studies that explore CB thus increasing a more coherent evidence-base regarding assessment of CB.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2022 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2022.104367