Preferences for Sources of Social Support of Hispanic Male Adolescents with Mild Learning Handicaps

This investigation focused on the preferences for social support of Hispanic male adolescents with and without mild learning handicaps for various kinds of life stressors. Social support is of special interest because of the role it can play in the buffering of the multiple stressors that adolescents experience in today's society. Adolescents with mild learning handicaps are particularly at-risk due to the probability that they experience ongoing difficulty in their social relationships. These difficulties limit their access to the positive effects of social support. Students at the junior high level with and without mild learning handicaps responded to questions concerning who they would talk to about a variety of everyday stressors. Students with mild learning handicaps in resource room and special day class settings had higher rates of choosing the category of “nobody” and lower rates of choosing siblings than their nonhandicapped peers. Differences were found between resource room and special day class students in their preferences for parents, peers, and teachers. Situational variations in these overall patterns are described.