Social-Emotional Predictors of Postsecondary Enrollment for Students with Disabilities: Findings from a Nationally Representative Sample

Abstract

Despite improvement in educational opportunity and outcomes, students with disabilities remain substantially less likely to participate in postsecondary education than individuals without disabilities. The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine the relations of teacher-rated social-emotional skills to postsecondary enrollment among students with disabilities. Using data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2, a classification tree analysis was conducted to ascertain which social-emotional skills were predictive of postsecondary enrollment in conjunction with student sociodemographic characteristics. Results indicate that compliance and, to a lesser extent, peer-relations skills, in addition to family income, predict postsecondary enrollment for students with high-incidence disabilities. This finding suggests that social-emotional skills play an important role in postsecondary enrollment for students with disabilities, providing support for the use of social-emotional skills interventions in improving postsecondary enrollment rates for students with disabilities.