ADHD in Adults: What the Science Says by Russell A. Barkley

Author:Russell A. Barkley
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: The Guilford Press
Published: 2007-10-18T21:00:00+00:00

Educational and Occupational Functioning

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FIGURE 9.3. Illustration of the significant group × sex interaction on the raw scores for

number of school suspensions (self-reported, interview). Scores are shown for each sex

within each group. Group 1 = ADHD, 2 = Clinical control, 3 = Community control.

Gender 1 = males and 2 = females.

The number of years of education, however, was significantly lower in males

with ADHD, while the number of school suspensions was significantly higher in

males than in females with ADHD. All of this suggests that males in general may

have greater educational difficulties but that this may be especially so for males

with ADHD.

Achievement Test Scores

Achievement tests were given to the participants in both studies (see sidebar) so

as to evaluate single-word reading, written arithmetic, written spelling, reading

comprehension, and reading rate. The results for the clinic-referred adults in the

UMASS Study are shown in Table 9.6. It is immediately evident that the ADHD

group scored significantly lower on four of the five achievement tests relative to

the Community control group, the only exception being single word reading

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ADHD IN ADULTS

Structured Clinical Interview of Impairments

For this project, we created an interview consisting of questions dealing with various

domains of major life activities, including educational history, occupational history,

antisocial activities, drug use, driving, money management, and dating and marital

history. This interview was administered by a psychological technician holding a

master’s degree in psychology and trained in the evaluation of clinic-referred adults.

The questions dealing with educational and occupational history are reported here.

Wide Range Achievement Test–III (Jastak & Jastak, 1996)

Reading, spelling, and math skills were briefly assessed with this widely used

achievement test. Reading is assessed through single-word pronunciation that pro-

gresses until the participant either completes the list or gets 5 words wrong out of

the previous 10. The spelling test consists of spelling to dictation in which the par-

ticipant is given a word and must spell the word correctly in writing. The test pro-

gresses until all words are dictated or the point of 5 missed words out of the previ-

ous 10 is reached. The math test consists of a series of written math problems of

progressively greater difficulty. All scores are converted from the raw test scores to

both a standard score and a percentile score based on norms provided by the pub-

lisher.

Nelson–Denny Reading Test (Riverside Publishing Company, 1993)

This test evaluates comprehension for written passages. After reading the passages,

the participant answers a series of multiple-choice questions about the content of

the paragraph. Reading rate is also assessed. Raw scores are converted to percen-

tiles based on norms provided by the publisher.

from the WRAT-III. Also, the ADHD group was significantly below the levels

of skills of the Clinical control group on spelling, written math, and reading

comprehension. The ADHD and Clinical control groups did not differ in their

reading rate, however.

It is important here to recall that subsets of the ADHD and Clinical control

groups were taking medication at study entry (Chapter 4). It is possible that such

medications may have effects on these test results. We therefore compared those

ADHD cases taking medication to those not doing so on all of these test scores.

The groups did not differ significantly on any tests.

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