Book Description

Given the well-established importance of promoting students' social skills and reducing problem behavior for school success and social development, a body of intervention programs have been designed and implemented for children and adolescents in the U.S. To provide appropriate targeted intervention programs for students of various needs and better allocate resources, educators and school psychologists need to understand different patterns of social skills and problem behaviors. However, relatively little research has adopted a person-centered approach to identify first-grade students' distinct profiles of social skills and problem behavior together and to pinpoint the associated behavioral and academic needs of children with different behavioral profiles. The purpose of this study was to identify the first-grade students' profiles of social skills and problem behaviors in classroom settings via teacher ratings, to analyze the association between student demographic variables and behavior profiles, and to explore the relationship between student behavior profiles and academic outcomes five months later. We fitted five latent profile models based on eleven indicators of social skills and problem behavior. Results revealed three different latent profiles from 566 first-grade students: Prosocial, Moderate, and Vulnerable. Male students were more likely to be in the Vulnerable group than in other two groups. White students were more likely to be in the Prosocial group. Students whose primary language was English most often tended to be in the Vulnerable group rather than in the other two groups. Students not receiving special education services (i.e., Title 1, instructional support, tutoring, response to intervention) or supplemental services (i.e., speech/language impairment, learning disability, emotional behavior disorder, ADHD, intellectual/cognitive disability) were more likely to be in the Prosocial group. While controlling for early academic achievement and the covariates (i.e., gender, race, primary language, supplemental services, special education services), no significant predictive relationships between profile membership and academic outcomes a year later were found. Implications for designing targeted interventions for different profiles of students, limitations of the current study, and future research direction were discussed.