Journal of Adolescence 37 (2014) 237–246

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Measuring help-seeking behaviors: Factor structure, reliability, and validity among youth with disabilities Yen K. Pham a, *, Ellen Hawley McWhirter b, Christopher Murray c a

Department of Educational Specialties, MSC05 3040, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA Counseling Psychology and Human Services Department, 261 HEDCO Education Bldg., 5251 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-5251, USA c Special Education and Clinical Sciences Department, 209 Clinical Services Bldg., 5260 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-5295, USA b

a b s t r a c t Keywords: Help-seeking Disabilities School bonding Life satisfaction Outcome expectations

Existing measures of help-seeking focus on assessing attitudes and beliefs, rather than specific behaviors, toward help-seeking. This study described the development of a selfreport measure of informal help-seeking behaviors (HSB). Participants were 228 high school students (148 males, 80 females) with disabilities from four states. Factor analyses revealed three underlying factors, each addressing a different source of help: parent, peer, and teacher. The HSB had good internal reliability and moderate validity. Results from regression analyses suggested that help-seeking behaviors toward parents and teachers contributed uniquely to students’ self-ratings of school bonding, life satisfaction, and career outcome expectations. Help-seeking behaviors toward peers was a negative predictor of career outcome expectations. The value of the HSB as a research instrument was discussed. Ó 2014 The Foundation for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Adolescents’ help-seeking has been conceptualized in two distinct ways: as a coping mechanism and as a self-regulating strategy (Newman, 1994; Wills & DePaulo, 1991). Researchers have studied help-seeking as a coping mechanism in the context of mental health support for issues such as depression and suicide prevention (Leavey, Rothi, & Paul, 2011; Lindsey, Joe, & Nebbitt, 2010). Research in these areas has consistently found that adolescents prefer informal (e.g., parents, peers) rather than formal (e.g., mental health experts, psychologists) sources of help regardless of cultural (i.e., race/ethnicity) or contextual (e.g., socioeconomic status, gender, or regional differences) backgrounds (e.g., Bee-Gates, Howard-Pitney, Rowe, & LaFromboise,1996; Leach & Rickwood, 2009; Leavey et al., 2011; Rickwood & Braithwaite, 1994). As a self-regulating strategy, researchers have examined help-seeking as a classroom-based behavior influenced by factors such as motivation, classroom climate, teacher support, achievement goals, academic efficacy, and perceived competence (Newman, 1990; Ryan, Patrick, & Shim, 2005; Ryan & Pintrich, 1997; Ryan & Shim, 2012). Help-seeking has also been investigated indirectly in the social support literature, where students’ perceptions of support from parents, peers, and teachers were used to predict a host of emotional and behavioral adjustments (Malecki & Demaray, 2003; Wenz-Gross & Siperstein, 1998). The current study utilizes these various conceptualizations of help-seeking to investigate specific help-seeking behavioral patterns among adolescents with disabilities. Defining and measuring help-seeking Existing measures of adolescent help-seeking have tapped into five similar but distinct domains that range from psychological readiness to actual help-seeking behaviors. Stanton-Salazar, Chavez, and Tai (2001) identified two domains of * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ1 505 277 7967, fax: þ1 505 277 6929. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (Y.K. Pham), [email protected] (E.H. McWhirter), [email protected] (C. Murray). 0140-1971/$ – see front matter Ó 2014 The Foundation for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2014.01.002

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help-seeking (confidence and openness) in their examination of the Network Orientation Scale (NOS; Vaux, Burda, & Stewart, 1986), a measure originally designed to assess one’s attitudes and beliefs about the desirability and effectiveness of seeking help. The first subscale, which they named Confidence, captures adolescents’ belief in the ability of others to provide help. Items such as “Friends often have good advice to give” and “Sometimes it’s good to talk to someone about your problems” capture these beliefs. Schmeelk-Cone, Pisani, Petrova, and Wyman (2012) found that adolescents’ perception of the capability of adult helpers was associated with adaptive coping behaviors. The second subscale was named Openness: adolescents might not seek support if they are not willing to share their problems with others (Stanton-Salazar et al., 2001). Thus, openness is characterized by the willingness to disclose one’s needs (Rickwood & Braithwaite, 1994; Wilson, Deane, Ciarrochi, & Rickwood, 2005). Items on the Openness subscale of the NOS are negatively worded and are indicative of lack of openness; for example, “Some things are too personal to talk to anyone about” and “You have to be careful with whom you tell personal things.” Lack of confidence and openness in seeking help were linked with adolescent loneliness, stress, and depressive symptoms (Lasgaard, Goossens, & Elklit, 2011). Research has found that one’s lack of openness was linked to smaller networks with significantly fewer potential helpers and to receiving less material and emotional support (Vaux et al., 1986). Stanton-Salazar et al. (2001) also found that Latino/a students with limited English language proficiency reported high levels of lack of openness. Female adolescents were also more open to seeking help than were male adolescents (Leavey et al., 2011; Rickwood & Braithwaite, 1994). A third domain of help-seeking is intention, which reflects one’s likelihood to seek help (Newman, 1990; Wilson et al., 2005). For example, Newman’s (1990) Mathematics Learning in the Classroom Questionnaire includes a subscale measuring students’ intention to seek help in mathematics. Participants responded to four items (e.g., “How likely are you to ask the teacher for help when you don’t understand how to do the problem?”) on a scale of 1 (not at all likely) to 5 (very likely). Wilson et al.’s (2005) General Help-Seeking Questionnaire (GHSQ) measures one’s intention to seek help from various sources (intimate partner, friend, parent, relative, mental health professional, helpline, doctor, religious leader, no one) for different problems (personal or emotional problems, suicidal ideation, stress, anxiety, depression, substance misuse, psychosis, and heart disease). A sample item from the GHSQ is, “If you were having a personal problem, how likely is it that you would seek help from the following people?” Common barriers that influence adolescents’ intention to seek help include preference for self-resolution and perceived and personal stigma (Downs & Eisenberg, 2012; Gulliver, Griffiths, & Christensen, 2010; Yap, Reavley, & Jorm, 2013). Among a sample of 256 suicidal college students, Downs and Eisenberg (2012) found the following common self-report barriers to seeking help: 73.3% “prefer to deal with issues on my own,” 52.1% “question how serious my needs are,” and 34.9% “worry about what others will think of me.” Other researchers also found that adolescents’ developing sense of autonomy and beliefs that individuals should resolve problems on their own were associated with lower intentions to seek and accept help (Wilson & Deane, 2010; Wilson, Deane, & Ciarrochi, 2005). In another study, a sample of 3021 Australian youth ages 15 to 25 reported that embarrassment and concern of being judged by helpers were top barriers that stop them from seeking help for mental disorders (Yap et al., 2013). A fourth component is perceived self-efficacy, which reflects adolescents’ belief in their abilities to successfully acquire the help that they need. Self-efficacy, or belief that one can successfully engage in a behavior (in this case ask for help), provides the motivational incentive to persevere when faced with obstacles (Bandura, 1995). Bandura’s (1989) Multidimensional Scales of Perceived Self-Efficacy (MSPSE) contains nine subscales, of which two assess self-efficacy for seeking help: Self-Efficacy for Enlisting Social Resources (SESR; “How well can you get adults to help you when you have social problems?”) and Self-Efficacy for Enlisting Parental and Community Supports (SEPC; “How well can you get your parents to take part in school activities?”). The fifth component of help seeking is actual observable behavior, which researchers have measured in a number of ways. Rickwood and Braithwaite (1994) asked 715 Australian high school seniors if they had sought any help for a psychological problem in the past 12 weeks. Those responding “Yes” were asked if they had sought help from an informal or professional source. In another study, Bee-Gates et al. (1996) used a checklist of counseling concerns to create a list of 23 personal, social, and academic issues, then asked 139 Native American high school students to indicate which of those problems they had experienced during the last semester of school. Five follow-up items asked participants to list all sources of help that they used for each problem that they indicated. Cultural and contextual factors also influence how youth define a problem, their likelihood to seek help, and from whom they seek help. White adolescents were more likely to seek help from friends and nonrelated adults for social and emotional problems, while Mexican American and African American adolescents were more likely to turn to family members (Cauce et al., 2002). Further, African American adolescent males were found to be distrustful of peer networks and mental health professionals and would rather turn to family members for help to cope with depressive symptoms (Lindsey et al., 2010). Liao, Rounds, and Klein (2005) found that self-concealment (“the conscious concealment of personal information,” p. 407) was negatively linked to help-seeking attitudes among Asian American students as compared to white peers. Bee-Gates et al. (1996) found no sex differences in help-seeking patterns among Native American male and female adolescents, which was contrary to the common finding of sex differences among non-Native American samples (e.g., Leavey et al., 2011; Rickwood & Braithwaite, 1994). Rationale for this study While help-seeking is linked with health and adaptive behaviors in a variety of contexts, little is known about help-seeking among adolescents with disabilities. The in-school and post-school outcomes of students with disabilities consistently lag

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behind their peers in general education (Cortiella, 2011; Lindstrom, Harwick, Poppen, & Doren, 2012; Newman, Wagner, Cameto, & Knokey, 2009). These students experience a range of social-emotional difficulties, including low self-esteem, lack of autonomy, and poor self-regulation (Hallahan, Lloyd, Kauffman, Weiss, & Martinez, 2005). From the self-regulation framework, the fifth domain (actual behavior) is characteristic of highly self-regulated learners – those who are metacognitively aware of needing help, motivated to seek help, know from whom to seek help, what to ask, and how to ask for help (Newman, 1994; Ryan & Pintrich, 1997). Understanding help-seeking behaviors of students with disabilities may illuminate potential strategies to improve their in-school and post-school outcomes. At present, there are no psychometrically sound measures to assess actual help-seeking behaviors of adolescents with disabilities. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate the Help-Seeking Behaviors (HSB) scale, an instrument designed to assess informal help-seeking behaviors among adolescents with disabilities. Study hypotheses were designed to test the construct validity of the HSB. We expected to find significant positive correlations with confidence and self-efficacy in help seeking and negative correlation with lack of openness. We also used hierarchical regression analyses to investigate if scores on the HSB predict scores on three criterion variables: school bonding, life satisfaction, and career outcome expectations. Method We gathered data from seven districts in the United States, representing the midwest, northwest, southwest, and northeast. Districts’ locale descriptors included fringe rural, fringe town, small city, midsize city, and large city. Subsequent to acquiring districts’ approvals, permission to collect data was acquired from 10 high school principals and consent forms were collected from 17 special education teachers. Finally, parent and student consent forms were acquired prior to data collection. Two inclusion criteria for student participants were: a) receiving special education services (IDEA, 2004) and b) reading at least at a fourth grade level. The HSB has a Flesch–Kincaid reading level of 4.3. Participation was entirely voluntary. Participants A total of 228 students participated in this study (148 males, 80 females), ranging in age from 13 to 19 years (M ¼ 16.21, SD ¼ 1.35). Students self-identified as white (50.4%), Hispanic (22.4%), African American (8.3%), mixed race (7.9%), Native American (3.9%), Asian American (1.3%), and “other” (5.7%). As reported by teachers, most students were from working (45%) and middle class (34%) backgrounds. Teachers could not identify the socio-economic status for 20% of students. The proportion of participants in grades 9 through 12 ranged from 22% to 26%. Students’ disabilities, according to their IEPs, included specific learning disabilities (72.8%), autism (8.3%), emotional behavior disorder (6.6%), other health impairments (4.8%), intellectual disabilities (3.6%), and other (3.9%). Measures Help-seeking behaviors scale (HSB) The HSB was initially constructed with 15 items to assess how often students seek help from parents, peers, and teachers for five types of problems: (a) general needs (“called a friend for help?”), (b) problems at school (“talked to your parents about problems at school?), (c) personal problems (“talked to a friend about personal things?”), (d) something important in life (“asked your parents for advice about important things in life?”), and (e) future and career goals (“talked to a teacher about your future or career goals?”). All items were preceded with “In the last few months, how often have you.” and students responded on a 5-point Likert scale (1 ¼ almost never and 5 ¼ very often). The HSB was designed to complement existing measures of help-seeking, which assessed attitudes, beliefs, and intentions to seek help. The HSB, along with other measures in this study, was piloted with one general education student in grade 9 and four students with learning disabilities in grades 9, 10, 11, and 12 at two high schools in the northwest. Students gave feedback on the clarity of item wordings and the ease of using the 5-point Likert scale. Students did not express any concern regarding the HSB. Network orientation scale (NOS) Vaux et al. (1986) created a 20-item scale to assess negative and positive network orientation, defined as attitudes and beliefs about the desirability and effectiveness of seeking help. Participants rated items on a 4-point strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (4) scale, including “Other people never understand my problems” and “Sometimes, it is necessary to talk to someone about your problems.” The NOS has demonstrated adequate internal consistency across various samples of youth, with Cronbach’s alphas ranging from .60 to .88 (Larose, Tarabulsy, & Cyrenne, 2005; Stanton-Salazar et al., 2001; Vaux et al., 1986). Vaux et al. (1986) intended to create a unidimensional scale, but Stanton-Salazar et al. (2001) found two underlying factors: Confidence and Openness. All 10 items on the Openness subscale were negatively worded, so high scores indicated a lack of openness. Cronbach’s alphas in the present sample were .67 for the entire scale, .69 for the Confidence subscale, and .71 for the Openness subscale. Self-efficacy for enlisting support The two subscales on Bandura’s (1989) MSPSE each contained four items asking how well students think they can acquire help from the following sources: parents, siblings, friends, classmates, teachers, adults in general, and community members.

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Prior research found the SESR and SEPC to have adequate internal consistency with Cronbach’s alphas ranged from .66 to .73 (Choi, Fuqua, & Griffin, 2001). The MSPSE uses a 7-point Likert scale (1 ¼ not very well; 7 ¼ very well), but provided anchors only for the odd numbers. During the pilot of this survey, students said that they did not understand what the numbers 2, 4, and 6 on the scale represent. In consideration of the unique population of this study, the 7-point scale was reduced to a 4point scale (1 ¼ not very well; 4 ¼ very well). Cronbach’s alphas in the present sample were .66 for the SESR and .63 for the SEPC. School bonding School bonding is a measure of students’ feelings of connectedness and safety at schools (Maddox & Prinz, 2003; Murray & Greenberg, 2001). Research has shown that school bonding is linked to a variety of developmental and adjustment outcomes, including self-esteem, delinquency, and academic performance (Maddox & Prinz, 2003). School bonding is an important variable in prevention research because it is malleable through modifications of school environment and individual behaviors (Maddox & Prinz, 2003). Murray and Greenberg (2001) found that school bonding has at least two dimensions: attachment to the school and attachment to the people at school. This study uses seven items that Murray and Greenberg (2001) found to measure students’ bond to the school environment (e.g., “I feel safe at my school” and “I like my classes this year”). Students rated these items on a 4-point Likert scale that ranged from 1 (almost never true) to 4 (almost always true). Cronbach’s alpha in the present sample was .84. Multidimensional students’ life satisfaction scale (LSS) Global life satisfaction is defined as students’ cognitive self-assessment of their lives (Pavot, Diener, Covin, & Sandvik, 1991). Life satisfaction is an important dimension of quality of life and a significant indicator of overall health among adolescents (Zullig, Valois, Huebner, Oeltmann, & Drane, 2001)). Since a major outcome of help-seeking interventions is to improve the overall well-being of adolescents (Gulliver et al., 2010), we assessed students’ life satisfaction as an outcome. The LSS assesses satisfaction in six domains: family, friends, school, self, living environment, and overall life (Gilman, Huebner, & Laughlin, 2000). Students answered these items (“I would describe my satisfaction with my family life as”) with seven response options: terrible, unhappy, mostly dissatisfied, mixed, mostly satisfied, pleased, and delighted. Cronbach’s alpha in the present sample was .81. Career outcome expectations Career outcome expectations are “expectations about actually obtaining a successful and satisfying career that utilized the skills of the participant” (McWhirter, Rasheed, & Crothers, 2000, p. 337). Outcome expectations are an important variable to consider among youth with disabilities due to their documented lag behind peers without disabilities in transitioning from high school to adult career roles (Lindstrom et al., 2012; Murray, 2003). Prior research has shown a linkage between outcome expectations and career interests, intentions, and decisions among youth with and without disabilities (Betz & Voyten, 1997; Ochs & Roessler, 2004). McWhirter et al. (2000) developed six items to measure outcome expectations based on socialcognitive career theory (Lent & Brown, 1996). Students rated these items (e.g., “I have control over my career decisions”) on a 4-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree). McWhirter et al. (2000) obtained a Cronbach’s alpha of .83 in a sample of 166 high school sophomores. Cronbach’s alpha in the present sample was .86. Procedures A key selection criterion for student participants was that they must have been able to read and comprehend at least at the fourth grade level, because the student survey had a Flesch–Kincaid readability level of 4.4. We relied on teachers to determine if this study was appropriate for their students with disabilities. Teachers administered surveys to their students in manners that would not interfere with regular instruction, such as before or after school or during lunchtime, both individually and with an entire group. To ensure consistency of survey administration across settings, we provided teachers with a 16-step checklist that consisted of three sections: before (“Explain to students that their participation is completely voluntary”), during (“Address any questions that students may have”), and after survey administration (“Seal student surveys in the return addressed envelope”). Teachers mailed completed surveys to the lead researcher. All student surveys were collected anonymously to protect the identity of participants. Ethics Since teachers were administering student surveys, the following steps were put in place to protect students’ confidentiality. First, teachers were explicitly asked not to look at students’ responses. Second, students were provided with an envelope to seal their completed surveys prior to turning it in to teachers. Third, students had the option to complete and submit the survey online independent of teachers. Data analysis plan Prior to conducting analyses, scores of all measures were screened for missing data, outliers, multicollinearity, and adequacy of meeting the assumptions of normality, linearity, and homoscedasticity. Complete data on all cases were obtained, so

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no missing data treatment was needed. SPSS 21.0 (IBM, 2012) was used to randomly split student responses in half and to conduct exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on one half of the sample. Amos 21.0 for Windows (Arbuckle, 2012) was used to cross-validate the factor structure obtained from EFA using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) with the other subsample. Proportions of students’ sex, grade level, and race/ethnicity were comparable across the subsamples. Cronbach’s alphas served as indicators of internal consistency. Correlation coefficients between the HSB and other help-seeking measures served as indicators of validity. Finally, we conducted hierarchical regression analyses to determine if scores on the HSB were predictive of students’ school bonding, global life satisfaction, and career outcome expectations. Results Exploratory factor analysis For the EFA, principal axis factoring with oblique rotation was conducted to determine the underlying factor structure of the HSB. Items with low loadings of less than .40 were removed (Costello & Osborne, 2005). Items with cross-loadings of .32 or greater on two or more factors were also removed (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2001). The following criteria were used to determine the number of factors to retain: (a) visual inspection of the scree plot, (b) Kaiser criterion (eigenvalues greater than one), (c) Velicer’s minimum average partial test, (d) parallel analysis, (e) a minimum of three items loading on each factor, and (f) the theoretical plausibility of each factor (Preacher & MacCallum, 2003). Using these criteria, three factors pertaining to help-seeking from parents, peers, and teachers were identified (see Table 1) and accounted for 64.93% of the variance in responses. One item was removed due to cross-loadings (talked to your friends about your future or career goals?). Confirmatory factor analysis For CFAs, the subsample (n ¼ 114) yielded a subject to item ratio of 8:1, which was low but adequate (Bentler & Chou, 1987). We used four goodness-of-fit indices to evaluate model fit: the c2 approximation of the discrepancy function, the comparative fit index (CFI), the standardized root mean square residual (SRMR), and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA). Hu and Bentler’s (1999) recommended criteria of good fit were applied (i.e., CFI  .95, SRMR < .08, RMSEA  .06). First, we tested a three-factor model as guided by the EFA results. This model had poor fit: c2(74) ¼ 209.11, p < .001, CFI ¼ .87, SRMR ¼ .06, RMSEA ¼ .13, 95% CI [.11, .15]. Modification indices and the theoretical plausibility of each factor were examined to determine which path should be changed (Kline, 2011). This process resulted in the removal of five items that had correlated residuals and an improved model, Dc2(50) ¼ 159.82, p < .001 (see Fig. 1). The final model had good fit to the data, c2 (24) ¼ 49.29, p ¼ .02, CFI ¼ .97, SRMR ¼ .05, and RMSEA ¼ .08, 95% CI [.03, .12]. Items, unstandardized estimates, and error variance are shown in Table 2. Prior to creating composite scores of each factor, we tested for configural and metric invariance to check if the factor structure in Fig. 1 was equivalent for male and female students (Milfont & Fischer, 2010). Chi-square test of difference between the freely estimated model and the constrained model (regression weights were constrained to be the same) was not significant, Dc2(9) ¼ 6.487, p ¼ .69, indicating that the two groups were invariant across the three-factor structure model. Table 1 Factor pattern matrix from exploratory factor analysis of the HSB scale (n ¼ 114). F1 Parent help-seeking Asked your parents for help? Talked to your parents about problems at school? Asked your parents for advice about important things in life? Talked to your parents about personal problems? Talked to your parents about your career goals? Friend help-seeking Talked to a friend about personal things? Talked to a friend about problems at school? Asked your friends for advice about something important? Called a friend for help? Teacher help-seeking Talked to a teacher about problems at school? Talked to a teacher about your future or career goals? Asked a teacher for advice on something important to you? Asked a teacher for help? Talked to a teacher about personal issues? Eigenvalues Percentage of variance Note. Loadings of less than .40 were suppressed. F ¼ factor.

F2

F3

.93 .91 .79 .77 .52 .99 .83 .81 .66

7.60 48.46

1.78 10.05

.82 .76 .73 .73 .49 1.32 6.42

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Fig. 1. CFA results with standardized estimates. All factor loadings were significant at p < .001.

Reliability and validity After confirming the adequate fit of the three-factor model, the total sample (N ¼ 228) was used to assess the reliability and validity of the HSB. Cronbach’s alpha was .88 for the full scale (nine items), .88 for parent, .84 for peer, and .84 for teacher, which all indicated good internal consistency (Nunnally, 1975). Correlations between the three factors were .44 (parent and

Table 2 Unstandardized estimates and error variance from final CFA model (n ¼ 114). Item Parent Talked to your parents about problems at school? Asked your parents for help? Talked to your parents about personal problems? Peer Called a friend for help? Talked to a friend about problems at school? Talked to a friend about personal things? Teacher Asked a teacher for advice on something important? Talked to a teacher about your future or career goals? Talked to a teacher about problems at school?

b

SE

R2

d

1.00 0.98 1.03

0.11 0.11

0.69 0.76 0.66

0.53 0.42 0.59

1.00 1.27 1.07

0.18 0.16

0.41 0.84 0.59

1.03 0.24 0.68

1.00 0.96 1.20

0.13 0.14

0.62 0.51 0.68

0.62 0.76 0.49

Note. The first item of each factor was assigned a weight of 1 in order to achieve model identification. b ¼ unstandardized estimate. R2 ¼ squared multiple correlation. d ¼ error variance or uniqueness.

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Table 3 Correlations of HSB with other measures of help-seeking, covariates, and criterion variables. HSB Parent Help-seeking measures Confidence Openness SESR SEPR Covariates Sex LD EBD OHI Autism ID Criterion variables School bonding Life satisfaction Outcome expectations

Peer

.23** .07 .32** .51** .11 .08 .02 .07 .05 .01 .32** .31** .22**

Teacher

Total

.24** .00 .21** .18**

.23** .06 .30** .42**

.29** .05 .34** .46**

.16* .21** .16* .001 .22** .01

.001 .11 .15* .06 .09 .09

.11 .16* .13* .06 .15* .04

.21** .11 .01

.38** .34** .25**

.38** .31** .20**

Note. HSB ¼ Help-Seeking Behaviors Scale. SESR ¼ Self-Efficacy for Enlisting Social Resources. SEPR ¼ Self-Efficacy for Enlisting Parental and Community Support. LD ¼ learning disabilities. EBD ¼ emotional behavior disorders. OHI ¼ other health impairments. ID ¼ intellectual disabilities. Correlations with sex, LD, EBD, OHI, Autism, and ID are point-biserial coefficients. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

peer), .47 (peer and teacher), and .58 (parent and teacher). Zero-order correlations between the HSB and other measures of help-seeking are presented in Table 3. The HSB total, parent, peer, and teacher scores were modestly associated with the Confidence subscale of the NOS and more strongly associated with self-efficacy subscales. Scores on HSB had near zero correlations with the Lack of Openness subscale. Association with school bonding, life satisfaction, and outcome expectations Next, we conducted three hierarchical regressions to examine the extent to which students’ help-seeking behaviors toward parents, peers, and teachers contributed to school bonding, life satisfaction, and career outcome expectations. For each regression equation, dummy coded sex and disability status were entered as covariates on the first block because prior research suggests that these variables may be associated with help-seeking behaviors (e.g., Hallahan et al., 2005; Leavey et al., 2011; Stanton-Salazar et al., 2001). HSB subscale scores were entered on the second block. Changes in the squared multiple correlations between blocks I and II (DR2) were used to assess the unique contributions HSB scores made to each criterion variable. Zero-order correlations between HSB factors, covariates, and criterion variables are presented in Table 3. Results of regression analyses are summarized in Table 4. After controlling for sex and disability, student ratings on the HSB accounted for approximately 15% of the variance in school bonding (DR2 ¼ .15, F(3, 218) ¼ 13.32, p < .001), 12% of the variance in life satisfaction (DR2 ¼ .12, F(3, 218) ¼ 11.22, p < .001), and 9% of the variance in outcome expectations (DR2 ¼ .09, F(3, 218) ¼ 7.15, p < .001). Examination of standardized beta weights (b in Table 4) indicated that help-seeking behaviors toward parents made a unique contribution to the equations involving school bonding (b ¼ .17, p < .05), life satisfaction (b ¼ .23, p < .01), and outcome expectations (b ¼ .16, p < .05). Helpseeking behaviors toward peers made a unique contribution to outcome expectations only (b ¼ .16, p < .05). Help-seeking behaviors toward teachers made unique contributions to the equations involving school bonding (b ¼ .27, p < .01), life satisfaction (b ¼ .22, p < .01), and outcome expectations (b ¼ .22, p < .01). Table 4 Results of hierarchical regression analyses predicting school bonding, life satisfaction, and career outcome expectations. Block

School bonding

Life satisfaction

DR

DR

2

I. Covariates Sex LD EBD OHI Autism ID II. HSB Parent Peer Teacher

b

.018

2

Outcome expectations

b

.088** .073 .002 .011 .004 .044 .046

.152***

Note. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001. b ¼ standardized coefficient.

b

.045 .052 .355* .226* .184* .105 .105

.115 .022 .125 .183* .178 .048 .122***

.165* .012 .271**

DR2

.086*** .232** .132 .218**

.160* .157* .223**

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Discussion This study was undertaken to investigate the reliability and validity of an instrument designed to measure informal helpseeking behaviors among adolescents with disabilities. High school students with disabilities across four states and seven school districts participated. Findings from an EFA and CFAs revealed that the HSB had three factors representing adolescents’ help-seeking behaviors toward parent, peer, and teacher. These factors had good internal consistency and were positively correlated with Confidence scores on the NOS and self-efficacy scores on the MSPSE, but not with Openness scores on the NOS (which measured lack of openness). These findings provided preliminary evidence of concurrent criterion-related validity. The overall measure was associated with students’ school, emotional, and career-related adjustment, with the parent and teacher subscales making particularly strong unique contributions to these indicators of adjustment. Factor analyses showed that adolescents display unique patterns of help-seeking toward parents, peers, and teachers. Although the initial HSB items included five domains of problems, EFA results indicated that the underlying factor structure was differentiated by type of relationships, not type of problems. These findings are consistent with prior research that shows adolescents differentiate between their sources of support when seeking help (Caron, Lafontaine, Bureau, Levesque, & Johnson, 2012; Leavey et al., 2011). For example, Caron et al. (2012) found that adolescents did not exhibit one general attachment pattern toward various individuals in their social support network. Instead, the way they connected with these individuals was relationship-specific. Findings in this study are consistent with this conceptualization of help-seeking pattern among adolescents and reveal that each relationship made unique contributions to students’ self-reported school bonding, life satisfaction, and career outcome expectations. Results from regression analyses add further support for the validity of this instrument and highlight the particularly salient roles of parents and teachers. Help-seeking behaviors toward parents and teachers, but not peers, contributed positively to adolescents’ school bonding, life satisfaction, and career outcome expectations. Prior research has found that student–parent relationship quality made the biggest relative contribution to psychological wellbeing, while anxiety in friend and romantic relationships was negatively associated with students’ psychological wellbeing (Caron et al., 2012). The present study found that help-seeking behaviors toward peers had a negative correlation with career outcome expectations and near zero correlation with school bonding and life satisfaction. This unexpected finding warrants further attention that is beyond the scope of this current investigation. One possible explanation is found in Panacek and Dunlap’s (2003) study. They compared the social networks of students with and without disabilities and found both groups to have similar size and composition of social networks at homes and in neighborhoods, but not at schools. They found that students with disabilities’ social networks at school were restricted and dominated by peers and adults affiliated with special education. Future research is needed to examine both the help-seeking behaviors of students with disabilities toward peers and the size and composition of their peer networks. Implications for research & practice Findings from this investigation have several implications for research and practice efforts. Four qualities make the HSB a useful addition to existing measures of help-seeking. First, the HSB directly assesses help-seeking behaviors rather than attitudes, beliefs, or intentions. While attitudes, beliefs, and intentions may be important precedents to behaviors, actual help-seeking is likely to have different outcomes. Second, items on the HSB reflect active engagement in the help-seeking process; respondents talked, called, and asked for help rather than being passive recipients of help from others (e.g., “My teacher spends time with me when I need help” or “My classmates give me ideas when I don’t know what to do” (Malecki, Demaray, & Elliott, 2000)). This is an important quality because of adolescents’ developing sense of autonomy, metacognition, and self-regulation skills (Keating, 1990; Sameroff, 2010; Wilson & Deane, 2010), and because few measures of help-seeking portray adolescents in the active role of seeking help. Third, the HSB assesses help-seeking behaviors from three specific sources: parents, peers, and teachers. These three informal sources of support have been shown to be important and relevant to school-age students (Caron et al., 2012; Malecki & Demaray, 2003; Ryan & Shim, 2012). Finally, the HSB is brief, making it an appealing instrument for research on help-seeking and social support, which tends to use multiple measures and faces potential time constraints. Although findings presented here are correlational in nature, they do suggest that help-seeking behaviors are associated with school, emotional, and career-related adjustment and each of these areas are critically related to the success of adolescents with disabilities. Findings from the current study also suggest the importance of teaching students with disabilities specific help-seeking behaviors such as: recognize when they need help, who to ask for help, when to ask, and how to ask. However, the lack of a validated and appropriate measure of help-seeking that can be administered to school-age students has limited the development and assessment of theoretically-informed help-seeking interventions (Jackson, Kacanski, Rust, & Beck, 2006; Schmeelk-Cone et al., 2012). Future research and practice efforts focused on developing and evaluating helpseeking interventions for this population seem warranted. Limitations Limitations of this study include those that resulted from common method biases (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003). These included common rater effects (predictor and criterion variables were rated by the same participants) and

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measurement context effects (predictor and criterion variables were measured at the same time, in the same location, using the same medium). These method effects could contribute to variances in the obtained scores. We employed a few techniques for controlling common method biases: a) protecting participant anonymity to minimize response apprehension, b) counterbalancing the order of the measures of the predictor and criterion variables, c) carefully constructing the scale items, and d) accounting for measurement error in CFA models (Podsakoff et al., 2003). Additionally, the directionality of the relationship between help-seeking behaviors and the three criterion variables cannot be determined in our correlational, exploratory study. Replication of this study with larger samples of adolescents with disabilities is an important next step. This study’s findings may also be indicative of help-seeking patterns among youth who do not have disabilities, but this generalization cannot be made without further research. Finally, although existing research shows that cultural and contextual factors influence adolescent help-seeking, we were not able to examine group differences due to the limited sample size. Thus, we were not able to examine if disability status influence the effects of race/ethnicity or gender with regard to help-seeking. Summary and conclusion Help-seeking behaviors are associated with a variety of positive outcomes for adolescents, and may be particularly salient for students with disabilities given the challenges they navigate in their educational pathways. The brief measure of helpseeking behaviors developed and tested in this study shows promise for use with adolescents with disabilities. The nineitem, three-factor HSB is simple to administer and differentiate among three reference groups: parent, peer, and teacher. Help-seeking behaviors toward parents and teachers accounted for unique variances in students’ self-ratings of school bonding, life satisfaction, and career outcome expectations, while help-seeking behaviors toward peers had a significant and negative relationship with career outcome expectations. These findings demonstrate the complexity of adolescent helpseeking behavioral patterns, which may develop uniquely across different types of relationships. Findings contribute to the modest body of research that investigates associations between help-seeking behaviors of students with disabilities and school, emotional, and career-related adjustments. Further research on help-seeking behaviors among adolescents with disabilities holds promise for improving their educational and vocational outcomes. 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