Analysis of a School Social Work Consultation Instrument: Findings from a National Exploratory Study

Abstract

Multidisciplinary professional literature depicts consultation as a multidimensional method with multiple models and sets of practice tasks. Classical and contemporary school social work task analyses consistently include questions about consultation but rarely define the term. Without a definition, we do not know what the researchers are really asking and what the findings truly mean. To address this issue, a national exploratory survey was conducted to gain a better understanding of current school social work consultation practice tasks. This article presents (a) the development of a researcher-constructed consultation questionnaire, and (b) the findings of a principal component analysis used to refine and revise the items measuring six consultation models. The goal was to establish the reliability and validity of the instrument, enhance data collection on the topic, provide confidence in the interpretation of school social workers’ self-report on their current consultation practice, and expand the literature on evidence-based school social work consultation.