We are delighted to welcome you to the International Psychological Applications Conference and Trends 2014, taking place in Porto, Portugal, from 4 to 6 of April. Psychology, in our time, offers a large range of scientific fields where it can be applied. The goal of understanding individuals and groups (mental functions and behavioral…

Poor reading ability is associated with numerous negative consequences. School psychologists should provide teachers with resources and support to improve student reading ability and prevent these negative outcomes. This paper offers a guide for school psychologists to use in the consultation process when working with teachers to address students'…

Treatment and management of chronic disease processes on children occurs across multiple settings, placing demands for consultation and expertise on school personnel, including school psychologists. One such chronic condition in children is type I diabetes. Children with type I insulin dependent diabetes mellitus exhibit high rates of…

School psychologists need to employ a multicultural perspective in the areas of death, dying, and bereavement. To develop multicultural sensitivity and competency requires setting aside one's personal beliefs in an attempt to adopt another's perspective. Consequently, school psychologists first need to explore their own attitudes about death and…

Counseling psychology is a relatively new field that is gaining autonomy and respect. Unfortunately, research efforts in the field may lack an appropriate research design. This paper considers some of the more common types of research design and the associated threats to their validity. An example of each design type is drawn from the counseling…

Consultation services have been considered an essential and important role for school psychologists throughout the history of the field. Traditionally consultation has been cast as a problem-solving process, nevertheless, it can be thought of as a knowledge-linking process in which psychologists advance knowledge in schools to various mediators…

School psychologists have considerable measurement expertise when compared to physicians, social workers, and other professionals delivering psychological services to schools and children. However, psychologists are far from qualified to portray themselves as measurement experts. It is important to know psychologists' boundaries of measurement…

Criticism of the construct "children and families at risk" has grown substantially in recent psychology and education literature. The practical and the semantic issues surrounding this criticism are explored in this paper. Four major objectives are presented here: (1) to provide psychologists with an increased level of awareness relative…

A school psychologist describes the experience of designing a database management system to keep daily records of services provided to students and parents. Information in the database included: dates, type of service, and time spent. A system such as this provides instant access to accountability data. How to create and maintain the database is…

School psychologists are currently being called upon to spend more time in direct and indirect interventions to assist students with academic and behavioral problems. This study examined if time used for interventions is related to school psychologists' effectiveness. A group of Iowa school psychologists (N=91), who in turn identified up to three…

An inservice consultation program between teachers and a school psychologist was designed to establish classroom conditions to improve 7th- and 8th-grade students' (N=233) thinking skills. Inservice training conducted by the psychologist emphasized encouragement of ideas, modeling thinking skills, opportunities for practice, and support of diverse…

A survey of 1,300 school administrators and 441 school psychologists examined perceptions of the causes of dropping out (891 administrators returned usable surveys for a response rate of 71.8%; the school psychologists' sample was part of a larger study that had yielded a response rate of 57%). Using a 5-point Likert scale, respondents rated 42…

The complexity and rapid expansion of the entire field of psychology make it appropriate to speak of "psychologies" when acknowledging the need for specialization of training and expertise. Nevertheless, unifying trends (UTs) exist in psychology, even though there can be no single set of theoretical principles to account for all empirical…

One of the important roles of the community psychologist is that of researcher. To determine how well that role is being fulfilled, and to what extent community psychology research conforms to accepted standards of social scientific endeavor, 621 articles published in the American Journal of Community Psychology (AJCP) and the Journal of Community…

Performance-based certification for educational professionals has been stimulated by demand for accountability and educational reform. This article suggests simulated situations and situational response testing as a viable means of contrasting individuals across a number of criteria variables in realistic settings. (Author)