PREVALENCE OF LEARNING DISABILITY IN SCHOOL GOING CHILDREN OF DEHRADUN - A SURVEY STUDY

Objectives. Screening of learning disabled Indian children out of the children of age group 8 - 11 years using Learning Disability Diagnostic Inventory(LDDI), to describe the various parameters like age dominance, sex dominance, limb dominance among the learning disabled children, to describe about the classroom performance of learning disabled children. 2. Method and Procedure. Permission of principal was taken to distribute the forms to the teachers in the school. Consent form and assessment forms were sent to the parents of 1500 subjects (n=1500). 1300 consents were received back, 200 forms were dropped, 1300 subjects were screened on the basis of inclusion and exclusion criterion, (n=1300). Teachers were given a familiarizing session to LDDI (non titled) and their reliability was checked and the teachers whose reliability coefficients (inter and intra rater) varied from 0.6-0.8 (Spearman Rank co relation applied were applied.)were selected for the study.Forms were distributed to the teachers.1120 filled forms were received after a week of distribution (n=1120), 120 forms were excluded. Forms were analyzed and on the basis of the scoring obtained , subjects were categorized under one of the following unlikely, possibly, learning disabled. 3. Results & Conclusion. 1050 school going children of Dehradun of age group 8-11 years were assessed using the LDDI and the forms were then analyzed, 278 children were screened out of the 1050 children to be having learning disability, accounting 26.4%. Thus the result of present study concludes that the prevalence of learning disability among the school going children of Dehradun of age group 8-11 years is 26.4%.