A Modified Content Analysis of Existing School Psychology Reports

Abstract

Discrepancies between our university’s training program’s report-writing guidelines and common practice in Manitoba could not be resolved by reference to the literature. To inform the discussion, we collected a sample of local real world school psychology reports and undertook a modified content analysis to operationally define and measure relevant variables. In this article we present our qualitative and quantitative findings on organization, readability, length, and the nature of recommendations in detail with implications to improve the extent to which school psychology reports incorporate an evidence basis and contribute to real, beneficial, and demonstrable change in circumstances for children and families.