Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

McCleon, Tawny E.

Committee Member

Stratton-Gadke, Kasee K.

Committee Member

Wei, Tianlan (Elaine)

Committee Member

Bates-Brantley, Kayla

Date of Degree

12-8-2023

Document Type

Dissertation - Open Access

Major

School Psychology

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D)

College

College of Education

Department

Department of Counseling, Higher Education Leadership, Educational Psychology, and Foundations

Abstract

Psychologists spend a significant portion of their time writing psychological reports. Oftentimes these reports are highly technical and written at a level which the literature has suggested is often difficult for teachers to utilize in their classrooms. Several previous research studies have examined psychological report writing practices and offered suggestions for improvement. One of these suggestions (theme or referral-based report writing) has not been as thoroughly examined in the literature. The purpose of this study was to examine this report writing style compared to more traditional report writing practices. This study utilized a novel approach to assessing teachers’ perceptions of these report writing styles which was adapted from the social validity literature (e. g., ARP-R). This study investigated both differences between each report writing style as well as a potential interaction effect between teacher experience and report type. Overall, the study did not find significant differences in teachers’ ratings between each report style. The readability of the psychological reports was hypothesized to be a confounding variable which may have impacted teachers’ views of the social validity of each report. Results, limitations, implications, and future research are also discussed.

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