chologist? The hypothesis is as follows: Those school psychologists who report having a professional support system, will score lower on a test for stress levels, compared to those who report having no professional support system.
School Psychologist. For this study school psychologist is operationally defined as being employed as a licensed school psychologist, as identified by the Information Questionnaire.
Professional Support System. For this study, professional support system is operationally defined as the self-report of the study participant, relying on the perception of the participant, regarding their individual views of professional support, as measured by the Information Questionnaire.
Stress Levels. For this study stress levels are operationally defined as the adjectives on the Stress-Arousal Checklist (Mackay, Cox, Burrows, & Lazzerini, 1978).
An understanding of the importance of a professional support system for school psychologists is needed to help alleviate the current levels of job stress being experienced, as well as to provide future research directions.
This review of the literature will include the following issues relevant to the topic of school psychologists workload and stress: increased need for school psychologists; what is a school psychologist; workload stress, time, tasks, and solutions; and conclusions. For this review, peer-review journal articles retrieved from Psychinfo, Proquest, and Infotrack will be reviewed, as well as information from the National Association of School Psychologists, found online.
Increased Need for School Psychologists
Kolbe, Collins, and Cortese (1997) reviewed the literature and reported on the increased need for psychologists to assist in the building of schools to improve the health of the nation. Research has concluded that the serious and expensive problems which are found in the U.S. today are due to behavioral patterns that are established...