Variables discriminating residential placement of severely handicapped children

The relationship of 11 social and status variables to two placement groups of severely handicapped children (home and community-based residential facility). Using a multiple discriminant analysis, we found that 6 of these variables (child's age, parental feelings about the suggestion to institutionalize, religiosity, mother's age, child's age at first words, and child's age at school entry) contributed significantly to the discrimination between the two groups. When the resulting coefficient of discrimination was applied to a subsample, statistical classification agreed with known placement in 75.68% of the cases, indicating a high degree of discrimination between children residing at home and in residential settings on the variables studied.