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Measuring Outcomes in Schools

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Handbook of Australian School Psychology

Abstract

In light of their training in psychometrics, evaluation, and statistical analysis, school psychologists may have the most knowledge, of any professional in the school setting, of evaluating the impact of educational and psychotherapeutic interventions. School settings provide a natural opportunity for important, real-world, and meaningful data that will enhance the delivery of interventions and decision-making as to who benefits from what intervention under what conditions. In this chapter, we provide detailed guidelines for strategies for the working school psychologist to measure system-level change, classroom-wide change, and individual change. We first present various methodologies for collecting data to evaluate change at all levels of intervention implementation. Next, we describe in detail straightforward approaches to calculate the effectiveness of an intervention. Throughout the chapter, we also review the practical barriers that may exist in the Australian educational system that challenge the collection of outcome data, and we present potential strategies to help manage these barriers.

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Chezan, L.C., Kratochwill, T.R., Terjesen, M.D., Nguyen, K.V.H. (2017). Measuring Outcomes in Schools. In: Thielking, M., Terjesen, M. (eds) Handbook of Australian School Psychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45166-4_35

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