Person-Centered Profiles Exploring School Engagement and Illusory Bias for Students With Emotional and Behavioral Support Needs

Children identified with emotional and behavioral support needs often demonstrate varying levels of externalizing, hyperactive, and internalizing behaviors requiring diverse prevention and intervention efforts. The current study implemented a latent profile analysis (LPA) to explore meaningful differences in a Northwest U.S. sample of 180 children receiving special education services for emotional or behavioral support needs. Six profiles were identified based on externalizing, internalizing, and hyperactive indicators. We then tested criterion variables of teacher and student reports of emotional and behavioral engagement and disaffection across the profiles. Significant differences were found for the teacher, not the student report. Finally, we created a student–teacher perception of engagement discrepancy score to explore concordance of ratings across profiles. Findings indicated evidence of student illusory bias related to perceptions of functioning compared to their teacher. Results demonstrated that student profiles with higher levels of support needs were associated with less agreement of student functioning across the four engagement and disaffection subscales. Limitations and implications for future research are provided.