Epidemiologic research suggests a gap between prevalence estimates of students with emotional or behavioral problems and the actual number of students identified under the federal category of emotional disturbance (ED). To better understand issues related to the identification gap, we investigated the academic and behavioral functioning,…

Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBDs) could be considered some of the most challenging students to serve in schools. The need for effective interventions for these students is ever-present. To design and implement empirical studies to better inform the field of EBDs, researchers must have a firm understanding of the most…

As the field moves toward adaptive and individualized behavior intervention, it is important to identify and consider relevant student characteristics as potential levers (i.e., critical factors) for improving intervention effectiveness. Motivated by previous findings suggesting that behavioral profiles and teachers' perceptions of students with…

Students with and at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) often have unidentified co-occurring language deficits, but few studies have evaluated communication-based interventions for this population. Functional communication training (FCT) teaches a communicative response (CR) as a replacement for problem behavior. FCT is an…

Functional assessment and functional analysis are processes that have been applied successfully in work with people who have developmental disabilities, but they have been used rarely with students who experience emotional or behavioral disorders. In the present study, five students in elementary school programs for severe emotional disturbance…

Existing research on students with twice-exceptional abilities concentrates on strategies to improve the educational experiences of individuals who demonstrate the comorbid presence of a talent for high academic achievement (often considered a strength) and a disability (often considered a weakness). However, this body of work typically excludes…

Of the myriad practices currently utilized for students with disabilities, particularly students with or at risk for emotional and/or behavioral disorder (EBD), functional behavior assessment (FBA) is a practice with an emerging solid research base. However, the FBA research base relies on single-subject design (SSD) and synthesis has relied on…

Bullying has been recognized as a dynamic process, where involvement is based on interactions between an individual and the social-ecological factors related to the individual's environment.While involvement in bullying is not exclusive to one population of students, evidence suggests that students with disabilities are overrepresented within the…

We report findings of two studies, one conducted in a rural school district (N = 982) and a second conducted in an urban district (N = 1,079), offering additional evidence of the reliability and validity of a revised instrument, the Student Risk Screening Scale-Internalizing and Externalizing (SRSS-IE), to accurately detect internalizing and…

Youth who are incarcerated in secure detention and commitment settings display a complex array of educational, behavioral, and mental health issues that affect the services they require, as well as their responsiveness to interventions. Yet, seldom are these needs understood or taken into account when providing services in secure care settings. In…

Concern is growing over the limited academic progress in special education students with emotional and/or behavioral disorders (EBD). We know little about how academic and behavioral factors interact in these students to affect their academic functioning. Therefore, potential associations were investigated over the course of one school year for…

Significant relationships were found between behavioral disorders and early reading achievement and current reading achievement in 45 behavior disordered and 45 normal secondary students. Results revealed a pattern of relatively poor reading achievement associated with behavioral disorders and continuing, poor performance in reading at the…

Behavior rating scale data on the adjustment problems of 146 behaviorally disordered elementary school boys were factor-analyzed. Five factors of adjustment problems were identified: Aggression-Disruption, Social Incompetence, Social Maladjustment, Attention Disorder, and Anxiety-Inferiority. The relation of these five factors to those identified…

This study examined intelligence and academic characteristics of 30 elementary aged boys with pure hyperactivity and 41 boys with hyperactivity mixed with additional conduct or oppositional defiant disorders. Findings suggest a great deal of heterogeneity on all measures along with some decrement in academic performance when conduct or…

Analysis of regular classroom behaviors of 13 behaviorally disordered males (grades three to five and 13 controls revealed that 10 behaviors (e.g., social interaction/teacher, directions, out-of-seat) accounted for 81 percent of variance in group membership. Child behaviors as well as child and teacher behaviors combined produced significant…