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Congruence and typology of diagnoses in school psychology: An empirical study
Author(s) -
McDermott Paul A.
Publication year - 1980
Publication title -
psychology in the schools
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.738
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 1520-6807
pISSN - 0033-3085
DOI - 10.1002/1520-6807(198001)17:1<12::aid-pits2310170104>3.0.co;2-b
Subject(s) - remedial education , psychology , typology , school psychology , mental health , medical diagnosis , test (biology) , congruence (geometry) , context (archaeology) , clinical psychology , applied psychology , empirical research , social psychology , medical education , developmental psychology , psychiatry , mathematics education , medicine , archaeology , paleontology , philosophy , epistemology , pathology , biology , history
Focus is directed upon the logic and import of the assumption that effective preventative and remedial mental health service demands reasonable agreement among service providers as to the nature and course of psychological problems. The study proceeds to test the belief that school psychologists improve in diagnostic agreement as a function of increased training and experience. Seventy‐two randomly selected members of groups of novice, intern, and expert school psychologists were presented with three child case studies containing a full breadth of information and were subsequently asked to render diagnoses. It was found that diagnostic agreement was absent at all levels of experience, and further, a trend was noted wherein school psychologists tended to demonstrate increasing disagreement with one another as they acquired more training and experience. The findings were examined in the context of comparative research from allied mental health and educational specialties, with a special concern for discovering prevailing patterns of decision‐making errors that result in reduced diagnostic agreement and validity.