Abstract
In 2011, the United States Congress amended and passed laws requiring states to monitor and decrease psychotropic medication use in child welfare systems. In addition to prescribers, Luna et al. Behavior and Social Issues, 27, AA16-AA20, (2018) identified case managers, caregivers, and teachers as potential contributors to the prescribing process. For example, due to the lower response effort, teachers may recommend caregivers seek a medical evaluation, which may give rise to pharmacological interventions for behavioral problems as opposed to behavioral interventions. To date, no study has evaluated the extent to which teachers display positive or negative bias for either behavioral or pharmacological intervention as treatment for behavior problems displayed by students. As a step toward addressing this issue, the current study randomly assigned 119 certified teachers to one of four groups: Medication information (Med info), Behavioral information (Beh info), No change (control), and Reverse video (also no change control). Teachers watched two 5-min videos of a child engaging in low to moderate levels of problem behavior. After watching each video, teachers rated seven questions on a 5-point Likert scale. Although teachers in the Med info and Beh info groups observed worsening of behavior in the second video, only the Beh info group provided more negative ratings than the control group regarding the child’s ability to follow directions. In addition, Pre-K/elementary school teachers rated the child’s behavior as “more normal” than did other teachers. Overall, findings suggest that teachers displayed (1) a slight negative bias toward the behavioral intervention; and (2) neither positive nor negative bias toward psychotropic medication.
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Data Availability
The data that support the conclusions from this study are available upon request from JTR.
Notes
The second author of the current study serves as the director of the APMRT.
The first author obtained permission to use copies of videos from Almanza (personal communication, August 15, 2021).
The Almanza et al. (2020) study was made up of 114 participants.
Participants in the Almanza et al. study watched videos and completed questionnaires in a lab setting in the presence of researchers, but the video and survey questions were identical to those provided via Qualtrics for teachers.
To reduce the probability of producing false positives, researchers only evaluated questions that were statistically different across groups on the omnibus test.
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Massey, S.L., Rapp, J.T., Bush, H. et al. Does Information Bias Teachers’ Perceptions of Intervention Effectiveness?. Educ. Treat. Child. 47, 35–49 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43494-023-00111-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s43494-023-00111-y