Evaluating and Promoting Positive School Attitude in Adolescents

At a time when rates of depression and other mental health problems are increasing significantly among high school students, measures of school attitude and well-being are of central importance to school practitioners. Students with positive attitudes about school experience more beneficial outcomes and are also less likely to engage in maladaptive, risky behaviors. Therefore, monitoring how students feel about their experiences at school is important, and a novel, fresh approach to examining school attitude is sorely needed. Past studies of school attitude have generally focused on internal, psychological correlates of school attitude, such as individual and subjective reports of students' attitude toward school and their motivation levels. Evaluating and Promoting Positive School Attitude in Adolescents goes beyond these traditional measurements and explores less psychologically focused indicators, including ecological factors and observable behaviors. This study provides school psychologists with a new, comprehensive, and ecologically based approach with which to evaluate the school attitude of high school students.