Consultation Trends in School Psychology Literature

Consultation is a prominent indirect service delivery method in school psychology today. Several publications endorsed by the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) have traditionally suggested the mental health, organizational, and behavioral models of consultation as the three prominent consultation models in the field of school psychology. However, no supporting data are cited and it is unclear if these three models are still prominent in school psychology today. The present research examined the consultation literature over the last 22 years in two prominent school psychology journals, Journal of School Psychology and School Psychology Quarterly (originally called Professional School Psychology). This research involved the analysis of 145 consultation articles from the school psychology literature. The data was analyzed to obtain information regarding the frequency of consultation articles published, any trend that emerged from this data, the most frequent types of consultation mentioned, the type of research conducted, and topics addressed in the articles. Analysis of consultation trends over time indicated a decrease in the frequency of consultation articles published over time in both journals. The terms utilized to address consultation models are greatly varied, demonstrated by the 107 different types of consultation referenced in the consultation articles. Clearly, behavioral consultation is the most frequently researched and referenced consultation model in the literature. The results suggested the three traditional prominent models have been modified over time. Mental health consultation and behavioral consultation were consistently found within the top three models researched and referenced; however, organizational consultation was infrequently mentioned in the literature and researched in only 4% of the articles reviewed for this study. Therefore, it appeared that organizational consultation is no longer considered a prominent model of consultation. Analysis of the articles that were not research oriented indicated that 76% of the articles focused on application of consultation. The topics of multiculturalism, training, and ethics were the focal point to a lesser extent, with each representing fewer than 5% of articles. Research focused articles that involved aspects of both questionnaire and intervention research tools were employed more frequently than were research involving only questionnaire research or intervention research. Implications for the present findings and future directions for consultation research are discussed