Convergence or divergence?: a longitudinal analysis of behaviour problems among disabled and non-disabled children aged 3 to 7 in England

Rebecca Fauth, Samantha Parsons and Lucinda Platt

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This study sets out to identify the incidence and development of disabled children’s problem behaviours, including conduct, peer, hyperactivity and emotional problems during the early years using the Millennium Cohort Study, a large-scale, nationally representative UK study. We track the behaviour problems from age 3 to 7 to examine the emergence of problems and whether disabled girls’ and boys’ behaviour converges or diverges from non-disabled children over time. Childhood disability is assessed using three broad measures: developmental delay (DD), long standing limiting illness (LSLI), and special educational needs (SEN) to ascertain the implications of particular constructions of disability. Finally, we examine whether parenting and the home environment moderate any associations between disability and behaviour. Estimating linear growth models, we find that disabled children exhibit more behaviour problems than non-disabled children across disability measures. We find no evidence that trajectories converge for disabled and non-disabled children; rather, children with LSLI and SEN show a greater increase in peer problems, hyperactivity and emotional problems over time. We find little evidence that parenting moderates associations between disability and behaviour. The findings suggest that further in-school support for disabled children may be warranted given persistence in problem behaviour well after school entry.

Keywords: disabled children; behaviour; Millennium Cohort Study; SDQ; early years; growth curve models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I3 J13 J14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2014-09
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/59659/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:59659

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().