Causal Attributions for Success and Failure in High School Classes By Special Education and General Education Students.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the utility of constructs from attribution theory to explain the phenomenon of special education programming for mildly h and icapped adolescents. The principal hypothesis of the study is that special education students can be differentiated from general education students by their causal attributions for personal successes and failures in high school classes and expectancies for final course grades. Secondarily, differences in attributions and expectancies made by special education students of differing disability category, special education program, and sex were predicted. The subjects for this study were 121 high school students. Half of the subjects were certified as eligible for special education services but were enrolled for no more than one class period daily in a special education program. A questionnaire was developed for this study. In it subjects were asked to rate the influence of nine causes of success or failure in school. Those causes included: attendance, class difficulty, concern about grade, effort, general ability, help, interest, specific skill, and teacher. Factor analyses of ratings of the nine causal attributions were completed for success and failure outcomes. These analyses yielded three factors for attributions made about successful performance which were labeled Interest, Task Ease, and Effort and three factors for attributions made about unsuccessful performance which were labeled Low Ability, Low Effort, and Task Difficulty. The Interest factor for success comprised of ratings for the causes good teacher and interesting class was used to test the hypothesis that special education students will be more likely than others to attribute success to external causes. The Low Ability factor for failure comprised of ratings for the causes low general ability and lack of specific skill was used to test the hypothesis that special education students will be more likely to attribute failure to stable, internal, controllable causes. Results revealed predicted differences between general and special education students and between learning disabled and emotionally impaired students with regard to explanations for failure outcomes. The differences expected between other groups with regard to failure and among all groups with regard to success and to expectancies about final grades were not found.