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Differences in school psychological report writing as a function of doctoral vs. nondoctoral training
Author(s) -
Eberst Nancy Dare,
Genshaft Judy
Publication year - 1984
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(198401)21:1<78::aid-pits2310210114>3.0.co;2-v
Subject(s) - psychology , function (biology) , training (meteorology) , school psychology , applied psychology , medical education , developmental psychology , pedagogy , mathematics education , clinical psychology , medicine , physics , evolutionary biology , meteorology , biology
This study was designed to examine differences in the report‐writing skills of doctoral and nondoctoral school psychologists. Fourteen doctoral level and 13 specialist level public school psychologists provided the 50 school psychological reports used in this study; 25 reports were written by doctoral level school psychologists and 25 were written by specialist level school psychologists. The reports were categorized according to the referral problem: mental retardation, learning disability, reading problem, emotional difficulty, and behavior problem. The psychological reports were rated by a panel of educators using an 18‐item rating scale. The results indicated no significant differences between the ratings of the doctoral and nondoctoral school psychologists' reports. Educators did, however, consistently rate reports that analyzed mentally retarded children's evaluations better than any of the other four report categories, regardless of the degree level of the school psychologist. Results indicated that both specialist level and doctoral level school psychologists are capable of meeting the needs of educators in the area of report writing.