The School-Wide Evaluation Tool (SET)

TLDR

Schools are encouraged to implement school‑wide positive behavior support to improve climate, safety, and culture, and the School‑Wide Evaluation Tool was created to rigorously measure primary prevention practices in this context. The authors aim to develop and validate the SET as a metric to assess implementation of school‑wide PBS, enabling evaluation of training effects and relationships with safety, culture, and behavior outcomes. The study demonstrates that the SET is a valid and reliable measure, useful for evaluating training impacts and analyzing links between school‑wide PBS use and social and academic outcomes.

Abstract

Schools throughout the country are now encouraged to implement school-wide positive behavior support (PBS) procedures as a way to improve their behavioral climate, safety, and social culture. Research is needed to determine (a) the extent to which schools already use school-wide PBS, (b) if training and technical assistance efforts result in change in the use of school-wide PBS procedures, and (c) if use of these procedures is related to valued change in safety, social culture, and behavior within schools. To address these questions, researchers need a metric for assessing implementation of school-wide PBS practices. The School-Wide Evaluation Tool (SET; Sugai, Lewis-Palmer, Todd, & Horner, 2001) was created to provide a rigorous measure of primary prevention practices within school-wide behavior support. In this article, the authors describe the SET and document its psychometric characteristics. The results of their study suggest that the SET is a valid, reliable measure that can be used to assess the impact of school-wide training and technical assistance efforts. The SET should also be useful in formal analyses of the relationship between use of school-wide PBS and changes in social and academic outcomes.