Children\u27s Attributional Style and Length of Stay in an Alternative Education Program

Previous research has linked attributional style in children to self-esteem, loneliness, depression, general distress, and reading persistence to the learning disabled. The current study sough to determine if specific attributional styles in children were correlated with their length of stay in a behaviorally based Alternative Education program. Sixty-two first-grade through sixth-grade children were recruited from two Alternative Education campuses in Polk County, Florida. They each completed two administrations of the Children\u27s Attributional Style Questionnaire (CASQ), separated by a two-week interval, and one administration of the performance Expectation Questionnaire, (PEQ), which assessed the children\u27s expectation of their ability to perform tasks specific to the responses cost system of the Alternative Education program. A backward stepwise multiple regression analysis was used to determine the relationship among attributional style, self-efficacy, and length of stay in the Alternative Education program. It was predicted that internal-stable-global attributions for failure, external-unstable-specific attributions for success, and both the level and strength of efficacy expectations would all correlate significantly with length of stay. None of the hypotheses were supported