Parents of children with Developmental Disabilities (DD) face particular challenges interacting with their children and have been shown to have higher levels of stress than parents of children without disabilities. A number of studies have attempted to understand the emotional climate in the homes of children with DD by examining parental Expressed Emotion (EE), or parental attitudes about the child and their relationship. However, many of these studies have been small in sample size and have only worked with one subset of the DD population. This meta-analysis examined the proportion of parents of children with DD exhibiting High EE through a statistical aggregation of effect sizes across seven studies including 600 participants. The fixed effects size proportion was .39 (SE = .02; p < .0001), indicating approximately 40% of the parents in the combined samples exhibited High EE. Results support efforts to address the needs of the whole family for children with DD in order to ensure a safe and supportive emotional climate in the home.
Keywords: Developmental Disabilities; Expressed Emotion; Five Minute Speech Sample (FMSS); Meta-Analysis.