(PS6-73) Examining Factors Associated with Student-teacher Relationship Quality Profiles Among Elementary-aged Students with Elevated Levels of ADHD Symptoms and Peer Problems

Students with elevated ADHD symptoms often experience difficulties in peer relationships (Ros-Demarize & Graziano, 2017) and strained relationships with their teachers (MacLean et al., 2023). However, there is a meaningful proportion of these students who get along well with others despite their symptoms. Because student-teacher relationships (STRs) are important for academic engagement and student success, it is important to understand STRs among students at risk for ADHD. We examined student- and teacher-level factors associated with various STR quality profiles. We were most interested in STR profiles characterized by high closeness/high conflict and low closeness/low conflicts, as these relationships may be more complex than the commonly studied profiles (high conflict/low closeness and low conflict/high closeness). Teacher-level factors of interest included stress, which is positively related to conflict in the STR (DeShazer et al., 2023), and teachers’ attributions of students’ ADHD behavior, which predict teacher-student interactions (Mikami et al., 2019). Student-level factors included teacher-rated prosocial skills and peer problems and peer ratings of likeability (García-Rodríguez et al., 2023; Zee & Roorda, 2018)).

Participants were 134 K-5^th grade students (50.7% K-2^nd, 74.6% male, 50% white) who were selected by 34 teachers (91.4% female, 85.7% white) because of elevated ADHD symptoms and peer problems. One month into the school year, teachers completed rating scales about stress and their students. Students were categorized into STR quality profiles by first averaging closeness items and then conflict items of the Student-Teacher Relationship Scale-Short Form (Pianta, 2001) and using conceptual cutoffs of 3.49 to designate high vs low (items’ anchors: 1= definitely does not apply;  2=not really, 3=neutral/not sure, 4=applies somewhat, 5= definitely applies). STR quality profiles included: low closeness/low conflict (n = 27), low closeness/high conflict (n = 19), high closeness/low conflict (n = 70), and high closeness/high conflict (n = 18).

Multiple analysis of variance tests showed that neither teacher stress nor attributions for behavior differed across STR quality profiles. However, students’ prosocial skills (partial η² = .28), peer problems (partial η² = .11), and peer likeability ratings (partial η² = .09) significantly differed by STR quality profile. Students high in both closeness and conflict had no significant differences with any other group in peer problems nor peer likeability ratings but did have significantly higher prosocial scores than students in the low closeness/high conflict group. Students low in both closeness and conflict had no significant differences in peer ratings from any other group but did have lower prosocial scores than students in the high closeness/low conflict group and lower peer problem scores than the low closeness/high conflict group. These results suggest that poor scores in either relationship dimension may be a marker for concern and need for intervention. Future research should explore these constructs in larger sample and from multiple perspectives (i.e., teacher- and student-report, observations).