Predictive Influence of Socio-Demographic Characteristics on Adaptive Achievements Of Children With Developmental Disorders

Adaptive behavior is defined as a set of conceptual, social, and practical skills that individuals learn and use in everyday life. The aim of this study was to examine the predictive influence of socio-demographic characteristics (gender, parental education, parental employment and marital status, family income, and the number of siblings) on the adaptive achievements of children with developmental disorders. The research was conducted on a total sample of 94 participants, both genders, aged 4 to 14 years (9.22±2.79), divided into three groups. The first group consisted of 31 children with SLI; the second group included 30 children with ASD; and the third group comprised 33 children with ID. Data collection on the individual characteristics of participants was based on a socio-demographic questionnaire specifically designed for the purposes of this study. To assess adaptive skills (conceptual, social, practical), the Diagnostic Adaptive Behavior Scale (Pearson, Patton & Mruzek, 2016) was used. The study was conducted during the 2020/2021 academic year in organization for children and youth requiring special support, preschools, regular, and special schools in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The results showed that among children with SLI, none of the examined socio-demographic characteristics were significant predictors of adaptive achievements. Among children with ASD, maternal employment status was a significant predictor of the conceptual domain, gender and the number of siblings were predictors of the social domain, and maternal educational level was a predictor of the practical domain. For children with ID, maternal employment status emerged as the most significant predictor in the conceptual domain and the overall adaptive score on the ABDS scale. In conclusion, socio-demographic characteristics as predictive variables have varying impacts on adaptive functioning across different groups of children.