Is Social Validity an Afterthought in Single-Case Design Studies in School Psychology Research?

The current study reviewed the practice and application of social validity assessments in single-case design (SCD) studies within the field of school psychology. Social validity refers to the acceptability of intervention or program goals, procedures, and outcomes to educators, families, and students. Understanding the ways social validity is assessed and analyzed in recent publications has the potential to improve both school psychology research and practice. Adopting similar procedures described in the (Snodgrass et al., Research in Developmental Disabilities 74:160-173, 2018) analysis, this review systematically investigated the extent to which social validity was evaluated in school psychology SCD studies, the characteristics of social validity assessments, the prevalence of assessing total construct social validity (i.e., goals, procedures, and outcomes), and the extent to which social validity findings were integrated with visual analyses to form conclusions about interventions. A total of 1371 articles were reviewed from six prominent school psychology journals between 2016 and 2020. Reviewed articles included 89 from the Journal of Applied School Psychology, 227 from the Journal of School Psychology, 471 from Psychology in the Schools, 177 from School Psychology International, 259 from School Psychology (Quarterly), and 148 from School Psychology Review. Although the content analysis revealed several encouraging aspects of the current state of social validity assessment, the majority of the findings suggested that there was still much to be done to advance the rigor of social validity practice.