(PS9-11) Bridging the Research to Practice Gap: Does Previous Training Experience Influence School-based Therapists’ Intentions to Use Evidence-based Practice?

Schools deliver a substantial portion of behavioral health services to youth (Farmers et al., 2003). Despite this, research indicates that school-based therapists’ fidelity to evidence-based practices (EBPs) during treatment may be suboptimal, therefore, when EBPs are attempted, delivery may result in minimal to no impact on student mental health outcomes (Stahmer et al., 2015). The literature contends that preservice training, or the clinical training that one receives during graduate school, could be the most direct approach to promoting EBPs. Despite the purported impact of preservice training on later in-service therapists’ behaviors, research has done little to empirically link these two constructs. Therefore, the current study aims to examine the relationships between school-based behavioral specialists’ (SBBHS) preservice training experiences and intentions to use EBPs.

Data consists of 80 SBBHS who were approximately 42.56 (SD =10.53) years of age, predominantly female (n = 53, 79.10%), and primarily masters-level clinicians (n = 47, 70.10%) that have worked in their current SBBHS positions for an average of 8.76 (SD = 6.77) years. SBBHS self-reported the degree to which they were trained in different treatment techniques in graduate school (Inventory of Previous Training Experiences; Adapted from Pidano et al., 2010) and their intentions to employ those same techniques to treat youth with anxiety and disruptive behavior problems (Therapist Behavioral Intention Survey; Adapted from Hill et al., 2021). Bivariate Pearson correlations were utilized to determine any significant relationships between SBBHS’ previous training in anxiety and disruptive behavior related EBPs and their intention to use those EBPs to target anxiety and disruptive behavior problems. Results indicated that there were no significant relationships between SBBHS’s preservice training experiences and intentions to use EBPs for the problem areas of disruptive behavior, r(66) = -.05, p = 0.71, and anxiety, r(67) = -.02, p = .87.

These results imply that self-reported preservice training may be minimally associated with school-based providers’ EBP behavior, which suggests the need for investigating other factors that may influence in-service EBP delivery. For example, some research states that an organization’s commitment to EBP usage and training predicts school-based providers’ intentions to use EBPs (Lyon et al., 2019; Williams et al., 2016). Given the limitations of self-report, retrospective measures of prior training, future research in this area should aim to enhance methods for examining graduate training curriculum. Despite these limitations, this research may begin to help community-based partners, such as school mental health programs, better understand EBP knowledge, previous training, and behaviors among their staff, who are at the frontline in advancing the quality of care for youth.