The Effect of a Psychiatric Diagnosis on School Psychologists' Special Education Eligibility Decisions Regarding Emotional Disturbance

Abstract

In this analogue investigation, 215 practicing Pennsylvania school psychologists reviewed hypothetical referral forms and related data (vignettes). Vignettes represented children who met eligibility criteria for special education as well as children who did not. Participants were most likely to recommend,as eligible due to emotional disturbance,children who met eligibility criteria and carried a psychiatric diagnosis; they were least likely to recommend children who neither met criteria nor carried a diagnosis. Participants were just as likely to consider children eligible by virtue of emotional disturbance when they carried a diagnosis but did not meet eligibility criteria, as when they met criteria but had no diagnosis.These results suggest that school psychologists may allow the presence of a psychiatric diagnosis in referral information to inappropriately influence their recommendations regarding eligibility under the special education category of emotional disturbance.