LEARNING DISABILITIES IDENTIFICATION: DO RESEARCHERS HAVE THE ANSWER?

Abstract. One hundred and thirteen studies were reviewed to determine how researchers identify their LD samples. Populations were compared on academic, process, intelligence, exclusion, and discrepancy components as well as the demographic characteristics of age, sex, and grade. Researchers were found most often to select the academic and intelligence components and the demographic characteristics of age and sex to identify their populations. However, these com-ponents were described in a variety of ways. Less than half of the researchers used the process or exclusion components or included a description of grade place-ment. The article includes suggestions for obtaining more generalizability of research findings based on results of the review of existing research studies. Even though a national definition of learning disabilities has been in existence since 1969 (Mercer, 1979), the area of learning disabilities (LD) continues to suffer from problems in defin-ing and identifying the LD population. The na-tional definition essentially includes process, academic, and exclusion components which are described as follows: 1) process- "a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological pro-cesses " (U.S.O.E., 1977, p. 65083); 2) aca-demics- "an imperfect ability to read, write, spell, or do mathematical calculations" (U.S.O.E., 1977, p. 65083); exclusion-"learning problems which are not primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor handicaps, of mental retardation, of emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural or economic disad-vantage " (U.S.O.E., 1977, p. 65083). On the other hand, the federal regulations for identification of LD students, that is, the criteria for determining learning disability (U.S.O.E., 1977, p. 65083) include basically the academic and exclusion components from the definition plus a discrepancy component. First introduced by Bateman (1965), discrepancy is defined as "not achieving commensurate with a student's age and ability levels " (U.S.O.E., 197, p