Educational achievement in school children with neurodevelopmental problems: Factoring in the family situation

The project will address how neurodevelopmental problems (NDPs) among children relate to family socio-economic status (SES) and parent child interactions in predicting educational achievement.

The following three research questions are addressed:Are there unique predictive contributions of SES, parent-child relations and NDP symptoms for educational achievement in school children, or is the predictive power shared among these factors?Is the relation between children´s symptoms of NDPs and educational achievement moderated by parent-child relations and/or family SES?How do members of student health teams consider the children’s family situation when deciding upon and implementing support for students with NDPs?

The study will be conducted in two participant cohorts.

For RQ 1 and 2 we will be utilizing a population based cohort of 8 000 twins in which a broad set of well validated data on the child’s NDP symptoms (e.g. of autism and ADHD), demographic data (parent income, neighborhood), child and parent ratings of their relationship is statistically linked with register based data on school year 9 grade ratings and eligibility to secondary school.

For RQ 3, qualitative focus group interviews will be carried out with members of student health teams.

The project is unusual because it aims at bridging a more sociological versus a more medical research tradition related to academic achievement. We foresee considerable practical and theoretical knowledge contributions.