VARIABLES ASSOCIATED WITH PARENTAL ACCEPTANCE OF AND OBJECTION TO SPECIAL EDUCATION RECOMMENDATIONS (COMPLIANCE)
Abstract
Parents of handicapped children are asked to make special education placement decisions at the recommendation of multidisciplinary Committees on the Handicapped. Studies of social influence have delineated variables that are associated with compliance. This study applied these variables: variables associated with the speaker's credibility (expertness and trustworthiness), with the message, and with the listener, to the study of parents who accept or object to placement recommendations. Parent perception of the professionals' expertness and trustworthiness, parent satisfaction with dimensions of the message, and parent guilt and denial were assessed by a questionnaire with 26 Likert-type questions. Demographic data were also collected. A sample, stratified by age, ethnicity, and type of handicap, of 343 parents who had come to an advocacy group was sent the questionnaire. One hundred and forty-two parents, 59 parents who had accepted the placement recommendation and 83 parents who had objected, returned the questionnaires. Chi-square analyses indicated no significant relationship between acceptance and objection and the following variables: sex of the child, position of the child in the family, who did the testing, the number of professionals used in the testing, type of classification, and who referred the child for testing. Only parental report of being informed of their due process rights was significantly related. Factor structures were determined for the accepting, objecting, and total groups. The first two factors, named contingent trustworthiness of the placement committee and contingent credibility of the evaluators, were similar for both groups. A discriminant analysis using the factor scores of the total group indicated that two factors, contingent trustworthiness of the placement committee and blame of the school, significantly differentiated between the two groups. No significant differences between the groups were found on the factors of credibility of the evaluators and awareness of the problem. Implications are discussed with regard to the role of the school psychologist in facilitating parent acceptance of placement recommendations.
Subject Area
Special education
Recommended Citation
FRANK, MORTON, "VARIABLES ASSOCIATED WITH PARENTAL ACCEPTANCE OF AND OBJECTION TO SPECIAL EDUCATION RECOMMENDATIONS (COMPLIANCE)" (1987). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI8715799.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI8715799
