How Do School Psychologists Address Issues of Effort, Motivation, and Honesty During Evaluations?

Data collected during psychoeducational evaluations can be compromised by response bias: clients not putting forth sufficient effort on tests, not being motivated to do well, or not being fully honest and careful when completing rating scales and contributing similar self-report data. Some of these problems apply to data from third-party informants as well. In the present study, we surveyed school psychologists about their approach to detecting, preventing, and reacting to apparent response bias. A sample of 297 school psychologists responded to at least one of four open-ended questions. We found that most participants only used informal techniques for detecting response bias (rather than specialized tests and embedded indices), relied on rewards or reinforcements to prevent response bias, and reacted to apparent response bias by noting it in their evaluation reports. However, a wide variety of other strategies were endorsed by smaller proportions of practitioners. We compare these results to results from similar surveys in neuropsychology, and discuss implications for applied practice as well as future research.