Research to Practice in School Psychology : Challenges Ahead and the Role of NASP ’ s School Psychology Forum

The goal of School Psychology Forum is to promote and disseminate research-topractice scholarship for the benefit of school psychologists in their clinical practice. This goal has evolved from a desired practice to a mandatory component of any clinical practice. Research to practice is of importance as the concept of evidence-based practice is codified in federal law, American Psychological Association standards for practice, and the Canadian Psychological Association standards for practice. Although there is a consensus that evidence-based practice presents a positive direction for service delivery in school psychology, there remains a stubborn and significant gap between research and clinical practice. Reasons for this gap are identified. In addition, suggestions for improving the credibility, robustness, and approaches to evaluation and implementation of clinical research are provided. School Psychology Forum is an excellent outlet for the publication of credible studies with strong research design to narrow the gap between research and practice. When School Psychology Forum was proposed by the National Association of School Psychology (NASP) president Bill Pfohl, the concept was that school psychologists would benefit from highquality research articles that were directly applicable to the practice of school psychology. Evidencebased practice is now part of multiple laws in education (West, n.d.) and this requires access to highquality research. School Psychology Forum is on the way to becoming a leader in realizing Dr. Pfohl’s vision of a NASP resource that supports school psychologists’ implementation of cutting-edge research for the benefit of school children, families, schools, teachers, and communities. Scholarly journals have traditionally focused on promoting research that supports and tests theory, otherwise known as basic or blue sky research (Ioannidis, 2016a). To repurpose scholarly journals to support evidence-based practices in psychological and educational settings is a structural challenge. Based on my experience as the editor of School Psychology Forum since 2010, I have a set of stages to be applied before scholarly journals can be a relevant source of information for the implementation of evidencebased practices. A major barrier is that most psychologists do not read professional journals (American Psychological Association Presidential Task Force on Evidence-Based Practice, 2006). This is a reasonable response to scholarly journals being indifferent or hostile to research relevant to clinical practice. Most academics and professional researchers are evaluated and receive tenure on the basis of their publication in high-impact journals. Nearly all of the highest impact journals in psychology and education focus exclusively on theory and theory-based research. Clinical and implementation research is most often published in journals with lower impact. Thus, most researchers, including Correspondence concerning this article should be directed to Steven R. Shaw, McGill University, 3700 McTavish, Montreal, QC H3A 1Y2 Canada; steven.shaw@mcgill.ca. Copyright 2016 by the National Association of School Psychologists, ISSN 1938-2243 those working directly in school psychology preparation programs, have an incentive to publish articles that are not directly related to school psychology practice. In addition, there is an incentive for currently low impact factor journals aspiring to status as high impact journals to publish papers that are primarily tests of theory. Without scholarly journals publishing clinically relevant articles, there is no incentive for school psychologists to read professional scholarly journals. The situation sets up a common, but false, dichotomy of research versus clinical or theoretical versus practical information. Practitioners want to have access to clinical and practical information and often are not interested in research or theoretical information. Most published research has a high degree of internal validity through strong research design, but lacks relevance and consideration of clinical applications (i.e., external validity). As such, research lacks credibility for clinicians (Gambrill, 2006). Credibility may be as important of an issue as internal and external validity when it comes to scientific support for evidence-based practices (Ioannidis, 2005). REFINING RESEARCH TO PRACTICE Research to practice is an extraordinarily complex enterprise. The mechanisms of the scientistpractitioner model that effectively support research to practice are not entirely clear (Joyner, Paneth, & Ioannidis, 2016). There are many factors and issues to be addressed by both researchers and clinicians before research to practice is a seamless and productive tradition in school psychology. Evidence-based practice is a process involving the “conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of the best available research evidence to inform each stage of clinical decision making and service delivery” (Canadian Psychological Association Task Force, 2012, p. 7). This approach to clinical practice in medicine was introduced in a seminal article (Evidence-Based Medicine Working Group, 1992), which represented the formal introduction of a new decision-making paradigm requiring clinicians to learn new skills based on scientific research in order to provide better care to patients or clients. Codified in U.S. law, accreditation of training programs and internship sites, and part of the new tradition of the practice of psychology, evidence-based practices are now the standard for all service delivery in school psychology (West, n.d.). The exact definition and operationalization of what is meant by evidencebased practice is not always clear. There are opportunities for misinterpretation or deviation from the original intent of evidence-based practice. Without a strong operational definition, evidence-based practice has become a halo term meaning all things good or a seal of approval for all interventions and practices (Thurlings, Evers, & Vermeulen, 2015). This has been referred to as a hijacking of the concept (Ioannidis, 2016b). For-profit consultation, manualized interventions, and sales of products such as tests or curricula rely on seeking the status of being labeled as an evidence-based practice for their sales and business. Frequently, studies are cherry picked to report only studies showing a statistically significant support. The use of evidence-based practices by these products frequently ignore issues such as the quality of study design and whether the studies are independent of those with a financial interest in the outcome (Forman, Olin, Hoagwood, Crowe, & Saka, 2009; Ioannidis, 2016b). The use of the phrase evidence-based practice as a marketing tool is clearly not the intent of the concept. However, given the difficulties and complexities of applying evidence-based practice, aggressive marketing campaigns using the phrase can overwhelm consumers and the result is the hijacking of an important idea (Shaw, Boulanger, & Gomes, 2015). At the other end of the spectrum there is the hard interpretation of evidence-based practice, which is that every intervention and professional practice must have overwhelming or at least consensus support from experimental research studies. In some cases, the hard interpretation also involves implementing interventions using the same methodology as was used in the published research study (Karthikeyan & Pais, 2010). This hard interpretation has led to charges that evidence-based practice is a robotic NASP | School Psychology Forum: Research in Practice Research to Practice | 341 approach to clinical practice that robs psychologists of professionalism. The purpose of the concept is to have research inform clinical practice, not to place a straightjacket on practitioners and prevent them from meeting the needs of their clients (La Greca, Silverman, & Lochman, 2009). Both the hijacked and the hard interpretation of evidence-based practice do not accurately describe the original intent and definition of the construct. Yet, exactly how evidence-based practice is applied in real clinical activities remains to be clarified. There are many opportunities and challenges to the full and correct implementation of evidence-based practices. Among the most important areas are improvement in clinical research and research-to-practice efforts. School Psychology Forum has potential to be an important outlet for improved information that is directly relevant to practitioners. However, there is a host of specific issues to be addressed before the groundwork for widespread evidence-based practice implementation can take place. REPRODUCIBILITY/REPLICATION CRISIS One of the difficulties with evidence-based practice is the requirement that there be a scientific basis for the effectiveness of the practice on outcomes. A practice cannot have a scientific basis unless it meets the minimum requirements of being reproduced and replicated (Greenland et al., 2016). In a large study attempting to replicate classic and important studies in psychology, most replications failed to find effect sizes as large as the original published study (Open Science Collaboration, 2015). However, most intervention studies do not even meet the minimum standards of demonstrating that they can be reproduced (Stephens, n.d.). Reproduction involves the same researchers under the same general conditions evaluating a practice exactly as in the original study and finding the same results. This is a minimum standard for scientific findings (Greenland et al., 2016). Replication involves independent investigators, methods, equipment, and protocols attempting to determine whether an effect is robust and can be found under slightly different conditions. In order for a clinical research study to be relevant and useful, there must be evidence that the effect can be reproduced and that it can be replicated (Shaw & D’Intino,