Treatment Integrity Reporting In School Psychology Journals

Presenter Information

Nicole E. Enfield, Minnesota State University, Mankato
Jessica M. Morales, Minnesota State University, MankatoFollow

Location

CSU 243/4/5

Start Date

5-4-2010 1:00 PM

End Date

5-4-2010 3:00 PM

Student's Major

Psychology

Student's College

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Mentor's Name

Daniel Houlihan

Mentor's Department

Psychology

Mentor's College

Social and Behavioral Sciences

Description

In order to truly know if a treatment is effective, researchers need to monitor the implementation of the treatment to ensure that each step is conducted correctly to be certain the treatment was the true cause of the study findings; this process is called treatment integrity. In this study, we reviewed articles to investigate whether treatment integrity was conducted on intervention studies, and if so whether it was recorded and published. We reviewed five School Psychology journals (Canadian Journal of School Psychology, Journal of School Psychology, School Psychology International, School Psychology Quarterly, and School Psychology Review) over the years of 1993-2009. We found that in the majority of the articles treatment integrity was not executed. This could pose a problem due to lack of certainty regarding experimental control and bias as to whether the treatment was the cause of the results of the study.