Promoting equity and justice in school mental health.

Advancing equity and justice in school mental health can address inequities in school-based services and outcome disparities. The purpose of this special issue is to promote equitable and just systems and practices in school mental health to promote change in institutional practices that have produced and reproduced inequities over time. The four articles in this special issue clarify a process for advancing equity in school mental health by addressing justice-centered variables to promote connections across and within systems to realize a vision of comprehensive and integrated school mental health.

Reliability, validity, and accuracy of the intervention selection profile-Function: A brief functional assessment tool.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the reliability, validity, and accuracy of scores from the Intervention Selection Profile-Function (ISP-Function): a brief functional assessment tool founded upon Direct Behavior Rating (DBR) methodology. Participants included 34 teacher-student dyads. Using the ISP-Function, teachers rated the extent to which students exhibited disruptive behavior, as well as the frequency with which disruptions were met with four consequences. Ratings were completed across three 10-min sessions, during which a research assistant also collected systematic direct observation (SDO) data regarding the same behavior and consequences. Results indicated adequate temporal reliability (≥.70) was attained for the adult attention and peer attention targets across the three ratings; in contrast, up to 8-18 data points would be needed to achieve adequate reliability across the remaining targets. Findings further suggested that while ISP-Function ratings of disruptive behavior, adult attention, and peer attention were moderately to highly correlated with SDO data, correlations were in the low range for the access to items/activities and escape/avoidance targets. Finally, analysis of difference scores showed that on average, mean ISP-Function scores fell within only 0.33 to 1.81 points of mean SDO scores (on the 0-10 DBR scale). Agreement coefficients indicative of exact score agreement were less consistent, suggesting accuracy ranged from poor to substantial. Results are promising, but future research is necessary to support applied ISP-Function use. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).