Relationships among relational communication processes and consultation outcomes for students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Abstract. Consultation has been shown to be an effective means to deliver school-based psychological services. The purpose of this study was to link patterns of consultant and teacher verbal interactions to consultation outcomes. Relational communication (Rogers & Escudero, 2004) was the research perspective taken, and the source of the consultation interviews was a large-scale assessment and intervention study of students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Participants were five consultants, 42 teachers, and 42 elementary school students who were diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The initial consultation interview for each case was coded using the Rogers and Farace (1975) coding system. Variables reflecting the nature of interpersonal influence within consultation--domineeringness and dominance--were calculated for consultants and teachers. Teacher dominance (successful influence) was associated with (a) teacher ratings of intervention effectiveness (r = .48), (b) teacher ratings of student progress-to-target behavior (r = .33), and (c) consultant observations of teachers' treatment integrity (r = -.32). Results suggest that greater attention be paid to how teachers contribute to the process and content of consultation. ********** School psychologists spend about 20% of their time in consultation activities (Fagan & Wise, 2000), and meta-analyses and reviews of consultation have demonstrated that it is an effective means of delivering psychological services (e.g., Busse, Kratochwill, & Elliott, 1995; Medway & Updyke, 1985; Sheridan, Welch, & Orme, 1996). Although skillful interpersonal communication is regarded as essential to the success of school consultation (Gutkin & Curtis, 1999), comparatively little is known about relational and communicational aspects of consultation (Erchul, 2003). Because the study to be described attempts to link patterns of interpersonal communication to outcomes of consultation, literature will be reviewed that pertains to the rather disparate topics of verbal interaction analysis, behavioral consultation, relational communication, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and consultation-based academic intervention. Studying What Is Said in Consultation One means to investigate verbal communication within consultation is to use a systematic coding scheme to classify the actual messages spoken by consultants and consultees. For example, to study behavioral consultation, Bergan and Tombari (1975) developed the Consultation Analysis Record, which classifies participant messages within four major coding categories. One such category, message control by consultants, has been shown to be a significant predictor of problem identification and, in turn, problem identification has been shown to be the single best predictor of problem resolution within behavioral consultation (Bergan & Tombari, 1976). Although the Consultation Analysis Record remains the only major verbal interaction coding system designed specifically for school consultation research, there are other coding schemes from the discipline of speech communication that have been applied to the study of consultation (Martens, Erchul, & Witt, 1992). With the exception of one of these coding systems (viz., Rogers & Farace, 1975), they will not be described here; however, nearly all the verbal interaction coding systems used to date to investigate school consultation derive from a perspective known as relational communication (Erchul, Grissom, & Getty, in press). Relational Communication The term relational communication generally refers to the manner in which a speaker defines his or her position relative to another speaker. In addition, relational communication emphasizes the following: (a) a relational control, or process, analysis versus the verbal content analysis of spoken messages; (b) an examination of paired sequential messages rather than single, isolated messages; and (c) the analysis of the dynamic nature of these messages across time (Millar & Rogers, 1976; Rogers & Escudero, 2004). …