Use of clustering techniques in deriving psychoeducational profiles     

Esther Sinclair  Leeka Kheifets 《Contemporary educational psychology》1982,7(1):81-89

This study explores whether a synthesis of clinical and statistical data taken from the psychoeducational reports completed on a group of 42, 9- to 11-year-old boys referred to a Child Psychiatric Outpatient Department for school-learning problems, would yield discrete clinical categories or clusters of children. An amalgamated hierarchical clustering technique which formed clusters by subjects based on a measure of euclidean distance was used. Forty-two reports were evaluated by licensed educational psychologists in five input areas: Developmental History, School History, Cognitive Functioning, Sensorimotor/Perceptual Functioning, and Academic Achievement. One of three educational placement recommendations was identified for each subject: No Educational Placement Intervention Necessary, Special Tutoring or Remediation, and Special Class Placement. Using clinical characteristic ratings given by the evaluators on each variable, a similarity-dissimilarity matrix was formed which classified subjects into four discrete clusters based on their clinical profiles. A χ² test determined that there was a significant association (p < .01) between cluster membership and educational placement recommendations.  相似文献