Short description of the project: Universal mental health screening is often recommended as best practice in school to identify social, emotional, and/or behavioral (SEB) health needs. However, little is known about the extent to which schools are engaging in universal screening. Although options to effectively screen for SEB problems exist, there is little known about the feasibility of implementing universal screening. Before SEB screeners continue to be developed, evaluated, and promoted, it is important that we understand if and how these screeners are being used, and what factors influence their usage. This information is critical to informed directions for policy and future research in school-based behavior assessment.The goal of the National Exploration of Emotional/Behavioral Detection in School Screening (NEEDs2) project is to understand how social, emotional, and behavioral screeners are used in schools, and what factors influence use. Implications of this work will assist school personnel, policy-makers, parents, and community stakeholders in decision-making about social, emotional, and behavioral service delivery in schools. This project is funded by the National Center for Education Research, Institute for Education Sciences, within the social and behavioral context for academic learning portfolio (R305A140543).
Short story/anecdote:
Last year, the first article was published in the Journal of School Mental Health that reported findings from a larger systematic review state department of education websites (Briesch, Chafouleas, & Chaffee, 2017). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12310-017-9232-5
Earlier this month, the project Co-PIs and Project Manager published a brief report on the progress and findings to date for RQ1 on the NEEDs2 website (Marcy, Chafouleas, Briesch, McCoach, & Dineen, 2018). https://needs2.education.uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/917/2018/01/NEEDs2-School-Based-Universal-Behavior-Screening-Issue-Brief-No.-2018-1.pdf
Link to more information: For more information about the NEEDs2 project, please visit https://needs2.education.uconn.edu/.
(Information about this project was provided by Taylor Koriakin and Emily Auerbach.)
