Residential independence of former special education high school students: a second look.
Daily living skills and low problem behavior are the clearest student signs that a special-education leaver will live on their own.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team looked again at former special-education high-school students. They asked who ends up living on their own.
They ran a regression with 43 variables. Daily living skills, social skills, problem behavior, and community traits stayed in the final model.
What they found
The model explained about 38 percent of the variance in living on your own.
Daily living skills and social skills helped. Problem behavior hurt. Community factors also mattered.
How this fits with other research
Allan et al. (1994) used the same method on an earlier group. That model explained 44 percent of variance. The drop to 38 percent shows the first numbers may have been a bit high.
Clarke et al. (2025) followed autistic youth for years. They found childhood daily-living skills predict adult success. The new study matches that, but in a mixed special-ed group.
McGeown et al. (2013) tracked special-ed teens into adulthood. They also saw problem behavior as the top risk. The two studies together tell us behavior is a steady red flag across time.
Why it matters
If you write transition plans, teach daily living skills first. Showering, laundry, and simple cooking carry over to paying rent later. Cut problem behavior next. Lower tantrums today mean safer housing options at twenty-two.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The residential independence of postsecondary students was assessed in 5,462 parents or surrogate parents of students with disabilities from the National Longitudinal Transition Study who had left United States high schools between 1985 and the time of the questionnaire in 1990. An index of residential placement independence served as the dependent variable in a hierarchical regression analysis that featured 43 community, family, student, and school program characteristics entered as block-wise predictors (i.e., entered in a controlled order). This analysis produced a multiple R2 of .376: missing data, youths' daily living skills, youths' social skills, youths' maladaptive ("problem") behaviors, and community characteristics all contributed significantly to the prediction of the postschool residential independence of former special education students during the first 5 years after they had left secondary school.
Research in developmental disabilities, 1998 · doi:10.1016/s0891-4222(97)00026-7