Factors Influencing School Psychologists’ “Willingness to Implement” Evidence-Based Interventions

Susan Forman, Nancy Fagley, Brian Chu, James Walkup

Publication Date: 01/01/2012

Cognitive-behavioral interventions are effective in preventing and treating various child and adolescent mental health problems and are useful components in treating pediatric medical disorders. Schools are viewed as important settings for providing these services, and school psychologists have the potential to be key providers of these interventions. Unfortunately, implementation levels are low. This preliminary investigation examined the relative contributions of personal beliefs about an intervention, attitudes toward client problems, social factors, and organizational factors in school psychologists’ willingness to implement cognitive-behavioral interventions. A national sample of 124 school psychologists completed a multidimensional self-report measure of attitudes toward an intervention and the context for implementation after reading vignettes describing a client problem (either depression or diabetes) and an intervention strategy (which either did, or did not, include the involvement of the teacher). In addition to the particular client problem, beliefs about acceptability/efficacy of an intervention and organizational resources for it were most important in predicting school psychologists’ implementation commitment.

Publisher: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12310-012-9083-z