School Climate as a Moderator or Mediator of the Longitudinal Effects of SWPBIS Implementation Fidelity on Behavior Outcomes

Rice, KG (Kenneth)¹, Meyers, JP (Joel)¹, Ducharme, D (Dustin)¹, Elrod, B (Brandy)¹, Saint, MJ (Jo)^1
1Georgia State University, 30 Pryor Street, GA30303, Atlanta

 

Submission type

Poster only

Scheduled

Hallway, 22-07-2016, 16:00 - 17:00

Keywords

SWPBIS, Fidelity, School Climate, Behavior, Suspensions, Office Discipline Referrals

Summary

School-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports (SWPBIS) is a comprehensive multitiered prevention program. Schools implementing SWPBIS with fidelity should experience fewer student behavioral problems. SWPBIS represents long-term, systemic commitments, but the few longitudinal studies of SWPBIS produced inconsistent findings regarding change in behavior outcomes as a function of fidelity (e.g., Childs et al., 2015; Flannery et al., 2014; Kim et al., 2018). We used three successive years of data to test competing models to explore these inconsistencies: (a) school climate as a moderator between fidelity and behavioral outcomes (office discipline referrals [ODRs], out-of-school [OSSs] and in-school suspensions [ISSs]); and (b) school climate as a mediator of the link between prior implementation fidelity and later behavioral outcomes. The sample included 470 elementary and 285 middle and high schools participating in SWPBIS during the three years of the study (a fourth year of data is in preparation and will be added to the presentation). School climate moderated fidelity effects in predicting OSSs, and school climate also interacted with grade level to predict OSSs and ODRs. There was not support for school climate as a mediator, though later analyses will examine those effects in growth models. Research and practice implications will be addressed.

Auteurs