Date of Award

8-31-2016

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Counseling

First Advisor

Melissa Pearrow

Second Advisor

Steven Vannoy

Third Advisor

Shella Dennery

Abstract

Evidence Based Practices (EBPs) in schools show promise in meeting the behavioral health needs of urban students, however there are multiple barriers to implementation. Providers’ attitudes towards EBPs may be one of these barriers. Through a cross sectional survey design, this dissertation answers four major research questions: 1) Is the EBPAS-50 an appropriate tool to use with school based behavioral health providers, 2) Do attitudes vary depending on level of experience (student vs. professional), 3) Do attitudes vary depending on a practitioners’ hire status (school-hired vs. non-school hired), and 4) Do EBPAS-50 scores predict implementation of EBPs? Participants were 160 school behavioral health providers who provided at least one hour per week of direct or indirect services within the Boston Public Schools. Results indicated that the factor structures for the EBPAS-50 and EBPAS- 15 did not hold with this population, however the EBPAS-15 was used for further analysis as it has been validated many times since its introduction. Using the EBPAS-15: 1) graduate students reported more positive attitudes than professionals, 2) school-hired providers reported more positive attitudes than non-school hired providers, and 3) there was no correlation between attitudes and use of EBPs. Though differences may have been statistically significant, it is questionable as to whether these differences are practically significant as the average, rounded, response from providers indicated that they agreed with EBPs to “a great extent”. This suggests need for ongoing research to identify: 1) aspects of evidence based practices that are important to school-based providers, and 2) a revised tool to measure the attitudes of school-based providers towards EBPs.

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