SOCIAL VALIDATION - A UNIFYING CONCEPT FOR SCHOOL-BASED CONSULTATION RESEARCH AND PRACTICE

Questions asked in consultation research often are not educationally o r clinically relevant, treatment procedures used sometimes are either unrealistic or unacceptable in the daily practice of consultation, the target behaviors selected may not be the most relevant or important, and the results of consultation research frequently does not represent educationally or clinically important changes. In short, much of cons ultation research and practice appears to lack social validity. This a rticle argues for a unifying concept for consultation research and pra ctice based on the principle of social validity. Social validity refer s to the assessment of the social significance of goals of interventio n procedures, the social acceptability of interventions to attain thos e goals, and the evaluation of the social importance of the effects pr oduced by those intervention procedures. in short, social validation d eals with three fundamental questions: What should we change? How shou ld we change it? How will we know it was effective? These issues are d iscussed and specific recommendations are made for the consideration o f social validity in the assessment, design, implementation, and evalu ation of consultation-based interventions in the schools.