School psychologists' perceptions of social power bases in teacher consultation

There have been different views expressed about which social power bases (French & Raven, 1959) are most relevant to school consultation. Martin (1978) posited that only expert power and referent power could maximize the effectiveness of the consultant-consultee relationship. More recently, Erchul and Raven (1997) proposed that, in light of Raven's (1992) expanded social power model, several other bases are also relevant. We studied school psychologists' perceptions of social power within consultation and hypothesized that psychologists would see "soft" bases as more successful than "harsh" bases when attempting to influence teachers who are initially reluctant to comply with requests. A modified version of the Interpersonal Power Inventory (Raven et al., 1998) was completed by 101 members of a state school psychology association. Results indicated that psychologists endorsed soft over harsh bases, thereby supporting the central hypothesis; and the power bases that operate within the psychologist-teacher consulting relationship can be summarized by four factors that were labeled position power, impersonal sanctions, personal power, and credibility.