What is known about Effects of School Psychological Services: A Scoping Review

Although there is a huge amount of evidence syntheses on several school-based psychological interventions, so far there is little knowledge about the effects of interventions offered by school psychologists to a diverse range of users with a wide array of topics. The purpose of this scoping review was to systematically investigate the state of past empirical research on the effects of the diversity of school psychological services published between 1995 and 2021 in peer-reviewed and grey literature. A special focus was put on characteristics of school psychologists, services users, and interactions between school psychologists and users as moderators that might influence effects. A search in four electronic databases yielded 401 articles that met inclusion criteria (10,949 articles at title and abstract screening stage). Results showed that past research predominantly focuses on secondary students, group interventions and outcome domains such as mental health, social and learning skills. With regard to moderators, we found relatively frequent reports of demographic characteristics whereas contextual or process-related mechanisms have not been a focus of past research despite their relevance to identify promising ingredients of effective school psychological services.