A Developmental Comparison of Emotional/Behavioral Problems in Students with Intellectual Disability

The purpose of this study was a developmental comparison of behavioral/emotional problems in students with intellectual disability. Methods & Materials: 120 students، consisting of 60 male and 60 female students in the age groups of 9 to 12 years، 12 to 15 years and 15 to 18 years were selected from the schools of students with intellectual disabilities of Shiraz School District 1 (the referring District) by purposeful sampling and then، they were compared. In this study، the behavioral/emotional problems of the students were evaluated using Enfield and Tonge Behavioral/Emotional Problems checklist (2002)، the Teacher’s form، which has the five subscales of Disruptive/Antisocial، Self-Absorbed، Communication Disturbance، Anxiety and Social Relating. For analysis of data، we used two way ANOVA and multivariate ANOVA. Research findings showed that the difference of the total scores relevant to the emotional/behavioral problems of students with intellectual disability according to age group is not significant، But according to gender and interaction of gender and age group is significant (p<0. 05). Moreover، about subscales of behavioral/emotional problems results showed that there were no significant differences in subscales of behavioral/emotional problems according to age group. However there was a significant differences in disruptive/antisocial behavior، self-absorbed and anxiety subscales according to the gender of the students (p<0. 05). Also there was a significant difference in all subscales according to the interaction between gender and age group (p<0. 05). Therefore، the development of behavioral/emotional problems in students with intellectual disability is an invariable. But in the behavioral/emotional problems، there are differences between male and female students.