Racial-Ethnic Heterogeneity in the Relationship Between an Early Elementary School ADHD Diagnosis and Later Child Well-Being

Predicted Future Teacher-Rated School Behaviors, Child Perceived Self-Competence, and Parent Educational Expectations of Undiagnosed, Diagnosed and Medicated, and Diagnosed and Unmedicated Children

Source: ECLS-K: 2010–2011 (Tourangeau et al. 2019).

Note: See table 1 for details. Displaying 95 percent confidence intervals around predicted scores.

Panels A and B: Black children fare significantly worse on both teacher-rated school behaviors than Hispanic and White children, regardless of diagnosis and medication status. However, medication is associated with positive school behaviors among Black children: diagnosed and medicated Black children fare similarly to undiagnosed Black children on both school behaviors, while diagnosed and unmedicated Black children fare worse than undiagnosed Black children, on average. Panel C: Undiagnosed Hispanic and Black children report significantly lower perceived self-competence than undiagnosed White children, but this pattern does not hold among diagnosed children. White children report comparable levels of perceived self competence as their Black and Hispanic counterparts, regardless of medication treatment status. Panel D: Parents of diagnosed and medicated Hispanic and White (but not Black) children report significantly lower expectations for their children than do their same race-ethnicity undiagnosed counterparts, on average. Yet parents of diagnosed and unmedicated Hispanic and White children report statistically similar expectations as parents of undiagnosed Hispanic and White children, respectively.