Patterns of Referrals for School Psychological Services:Replication of the Referral Problems Category system

Those interested in studying patterns of referrals for school psychological services encounter the problem of working with data that are essentially idiographic. Other authors concerned with this problem have developed categories for referrals based on logical groupings, but the fact that systems vary widely from study to study prevents data comparisons. Understanding referral patterns might lead to a more sophisticated appreciation of the circumstances in which children are referred for evaluation, in turn leading to improved planning for service delivery. In a previous study by Ownby et al. (in press) a 16 category system was developed with a sample of referrals drawn from a small suburban school system. In the present study, analysis of referrals drawn from another school system revealed date-, sex-, and age-related patterns similar to those found by Ownby et al. Comparisons of data from the previous study to these data show statistically significant relations among frequencies of referrals within the category system.