The Effects of School-wide Positive Behavior Support on High School Dropout Rates and Specific Dropout Risk Factors

screening for four key criteria (empirical, policy or practice intervention study, K-12 population, DV= dropout rates or school completion rates), (c) full article screening to determine if articles met all inclusion criteria, and (d) an ancestral search of all included articles’ reference lists. Specific coding and inclusion criteria definitions are located in appendix A. Electronic search. I conducted a search of six common psychology and educational electronic databases (Academic Search Premier, ERIC, Professional Development Collection, PsychARTICLES, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, and PsycINFO), which included all articles indexed in or before June 2012, to identify empirical studies of policy or practice interventions directed at reducing high school dropout rates or increasing school completion rates. Search terms included variations and combinations of the following terms: high school, dropout programs, dropout prevention, high school graduation, high school graduation rate, completing high school, positive behavior interventions and supports, PBIS, school completion, and high school completion rate. In order to ensure the academic rigor of research studies, search results were limited to peer reviewed publications. After removing duplicates, this search process resulted in 558 abstracts for review. Abstract review. I read and coded abstracts for each citation to determine if the fullreview. I read and coded abstracts for each citation to determine if the full article should be reviewed using the following criteria. First the article needed to be a peerreviewed empirical study. That is, I excluded literature reviews, position papers, program EFFECTS OF PBIS ON DROPOUT AND RISK FACTORS 11 reviews or descriptions, and books or chapters. Second, the article needed to test policy interventions, which affected an entire state or regional population, or practice interventions, which affected a specific group or school. Empirical studies of risk factors or outcomes for students who drop out of high school were excluded. Third the policy or practice intervention needed to be preventative (i.e., not a recovery program) and directed and implemented at the K12 level. Interventions implemented at the early childhood or adult level or exclusively with students who had already dropped out of high school (recovery programs) were excluded. Community-based, school-based, and mixed interventions were included in order to provide a comprehensive picture of the policy and practices that have been used to reduce high school dropout rates. And finally, one of the dependent variables measured needed to be either high school dropout rate or high school completion rate. A total of 88 of the 558 (16%) articles reviewed were retained for full article review. Full article review. I read and reviewed each article to determine if the article met each of the criteria used for the abstract review as well as two additional criteria. First, the intervention study needed to be experimental (i.e., group experimental, group quasi-experimental design with a control group, experimental single subject designs, or mixed methods including one of these elements). I excluded studies that did not achieve experimental control (i.e., qualitative studies, case studies, correlational studies, pre-post test designs without a control group, or single subject studies without sufficient replications). Second, due to the contextual nature of dropout behavior, I excluded intervention studies that were implemented outside of the United States. A total of 26 of the 88 (30%) articles reviewed during this process were retained for inclusion in this review. This included 10 policy intervention studies and 16 practice intervention studies. EFFECTS OF PBIS ON DROPOUT AND RISK FACTORS 12 Ancestral Search. In order to ensure a comprehensive review of relevant literature, I conducted an ancestral search from the reference lists of the 25 articles that were retained after full article review. I located each citation in the reference lists of included articles and evaluated the abstract based on the criteria in the abstract review. A total of 976 abstracts were reviewed as part of this process. Fifteen abstracts were identified through both the initial search procedures and the ancestral search. Of the 976 abstracts reviewed, 16 new articles met the criteria for full article review. After full article review, a total of 6 of those 16 articles were retained for inclusion in this review (1 policy and 5 practice intervention studies). The reference lists of these 6 newly identified articles were also included in the ancestral search procedures. In total, I reviewed 1,519 unique abstracts, passed 104 abstracts to full coding, and retained a total of 32 articles (11 policy and 21 practice intervention studies) in the final fully