Dissertation research in school psychology: Changes in topics and methodology over the past 25 years

Eighty school psychology programs offering training at the doctoral level were contacted with a request for lists of authors, titles, and abstracts of dissertations completed between the years 2000 and 2007. Titles and abstracts from 1119 dissertations were reviewed to assess the interests and experiences of new researchers and practitioners in school psychology and to compare recent trends to findings of earlier surveys of school psychology dissertations conducted more than two decades ago. Results indicated that social issues, instruction, intervention, and assessment continue to be popular areas of research, whereas topics of cognitive or personality research have been nearly abandoned. Many fewer dissertations in this sample used experimental designs, though an increase was observed in the use of single-subject designs.