Abstract
Purpose of Study. The purpose of this investigation was to determine if school psychologists who apply specific procedural guidelines when dealing with sociobehavioral problems will be rated more effective than psychologists who follow their normal procedures. Methodology. A treatment group and a control group, of twelve psychologists each, were selected for the experiment from five southern California school districts. The treatment group was oriented to the purpose of use of the guidelines they were to follow. One hundred and twenty teacher-referred cases were distributed, five each, to the subject psychologists. After six weeks the referring teacher was asked to rate the improvement of the pupil and the effectiveness of the psychologist. To determine if there was a significant difference in the ratings received by the subject groups, the data was tested by using the chi square test of independent samples with a significance level of .05. Individual districts were tested separately, and variables relating to the characteristics of the psychologists were analyzed. Results. The study revealed that the treatment group psychologists received significantly better scores than the control group as indicated by the effectiveness ratings. When psychologist effectiveness was determined by substituting the "pupil improvement scores," the results were the same. The analysis of the characteristics, such as, sex, age, experience, education, or grade level of the pupil, revealed that these variables had no significant bearing on the teachers' ratings.