The role of ADHD in academic adversity: disentangling ADHD effects from other personal and contextual factors

Students with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) experience significant academic difficulties that can lead to numerous negative academic consequences. With a focus on adverse academic outcomes, this study seeks to disentangle variance attributable to ADHD from variance attributable to salient personal and contextual covariates. Responses from 136 students with ADHD and 3,779 non-ADHD peers from 9 high schools were analyzed using logistic regression. Dependent measures included academic failure, grade repetition, school refusal, changing classes and school, school exclusion, and schoolwork noncompletion. Covariates comprised personal (e.g., sociodemographics, personality, prior achievement, specific learning disabilities, motivation) and contextual (e.g., school size, school socioeconomic status, school average achievement) factors. Findings indicated that, after accounting for personal and contextual covariates, ADHD explained significant variance in numerous adversities (schoolwork noncompletion, school suspension, school expulsion, changing schools, grade repetition). Thus, beyond the effects of numerous personal and contextual covariates, ADHD has a distinct presence in students' academic adversity. Also interesting, after accounting for other personal and contextual factors, was academic adversity with which ADHD was not associated. Findings provide direction for educational intervention targeting ADHD and associated factors found to be significant in the study.