Social status, popularity goals and students with learning disabilities: an initial investigation

Abstract

The current study examined whether students' social goals might help explain why students with learning disabilities (LD) often have lower social status in school. Participants included 336 rural and ethnically diverse high school students (of whom 16 had a LD diagnosis). Participants reported on their social status, popularity goals, and social preference goals. Findings support that students with a LD diagnosis are regularly members of less popular peer groups, but are fully socially integrated within their peer groups. Findings also note that students with and without a LD diagnosis generally had similar social preference and popularity goals. Thus, the popularity of students with a LD diagnosis is unlikely due to psychological desires for popularity, but more likely to be due to other social experiences.