Treatment acceptability of interventions published in six school psychology journals

Abstract

Treatment acceptability (TA) is critical when selecting and implementing an intervention, as TA is associated with treatment outcomes. The significance of TA is reflected in school psychology models for services that state that school psychologists should address TA during development, implementation, and evaluation of interventions. However, the understanding of TA as it pertains to issues relevant to school psychologists is limited by the lack of analyses of the reporting of TA in intervention research. This study addresses this topic, as it represents a content analysis of intervention research published in six peer-reviewed journals in the field of school psychology from 2005–2014; the search yielded 2,343 articles, of which 243 were intervention research articles that included children as target samples. Overall results suggest low assessment or monitoring of TA in school psychology intervention research. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.