Special Education ETDs

Publication Date

7-30-1975

Abstract

There is a great deal of personality research being carried out with children. Most of these studies are concerned with comparing a normal sample with mentally retarded, emotionally disturbed, or delinquent youths. Lately, educators have addressed their concerns to meeting the needs of the child with learning disabilities. Because of the recent increase in programs for learning disabled children, the writer chose to study these students in two types of settings: the resources room and itinerant program. Current literature indicates links between locus of control and academic achievement. Both groups of learning disabled students are compared to regular class students in regard to their locus of control. Locus of control refers to the extent to which a person feels that he, or another person or force, controls his life. Twenty-five items were adapted from two current children's scales for locus of control for use in a Q-sort task. A nine-columned Q-sort board was used and labelled along a continuum from "Most Like Me" to "Least Like Me". Students placed each item card in the column expressing their degree of agreement or disagreement with the item. Items were scored for internality and the column in which each item was placed was recorded. A Mann-Whitney U-test between itinerant and regular class groups showed significant difference at the .025 level. Significance was not found between the resource room and itinerant groups nor the resource room and regular class groups. Spearman rank correlations showed a rather high positive correlation between all groups on column placement.

Document Type

Thesis

Language

English

Degree Name

Special Education

Level of Degree

Masters

Department Name

Special Education

First Committee Member (Chair)

Glenn Van Etten

Second Committee Member

Roger Lee Kroth

Third Committee Member

Billy Leslie Watson

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