The Development and Field Testing of a School Psychologist Employment Interview Instrument

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop an interview instrument for school systems to use in the hiring process for school psychologists. The current professional standards, guidelines for practice, and existing literature were reviewed, which yielded consistent agreement of 10 interrelated domains that address essential skills and knowledge necessary to be a school psychologist practitioner. Interview items were constructed to assess proficiency across these 10 domains. A sample of 41 school psychologists volunteered to pilot the interview instrument. Interviews were conducted using interview questions, and responses were scored for each question using a 3-point rubric. To provide a measure of concurrent validity, an independent rating of the psychologist's skills was obtained from each psychologist's current supervisor. It was found that practitioners who obtained higher average scores on the interview were rated significantly higher by their supervisors (r = 0.51). It is suggested that this type of structured interview instrument, with items based on essential skills and knowledge to be a school psychologist, holds promise in assisting those conducting interviews to reliably gather useful information about a candidate's skill and knowledge set when making hiring decisions.

KEYWORDS:

• psychologists
• selection
• employment

This article was accepted under the editorialship of Dr. Charles A. Maher.

Notes

1. A Blueprint for Training and Practice III was published in 2006. A careful review of the two documents side by side suggests the content and concepts of the original practice domains from Blueprint II were carried over into the construction of Blueprint III. The authors of Blueprint III in fact state their commitment to “maintaining the domains contained in Blueprint II … The Domains of Training and Practice in school psychology [in Blueprint III] are essentially the same as for Blueprint II. We added one domain: technology. Other domains were combined” (Ysseldyke et al., 2006, p. 6). The authors of this article suggest that although the paper was originally written using Blueprint II as a key document, upon close review of Blueprint III the essence of the domains remains intact and the ideas consistent with A Blueprint for Training and Practice III.

2. See, for example, Kuncel et al., 2005; Julian, 2005; Kuncel, Hezlett, & Ones, 2001; Stilwell, Thornton, & Pashley, 2005.

3. Versions designed for use in schools can be obtained from the American Association of School Personnel Administrators (www.aaspa.org). University-based researchers can obtain versions of the instrument useful for additional investigations from [email protected] at no cost.