Mental Health Consultant Reports of the Field Trials of Instruments for Surveying Problems in Schools.

Twenty mental health consultant reports are presented on the field testing of three questionnaires for identifying potential problems in schools. The staff and student questionnaires are broken into ten areas: student characteristics and relationships; student general satisfaction; student-teacher relationships; teacher characteristics and relationships; principal-student relationships; principal-teacher relationships; school-community relationships; groups at risk--including cheaters, dropouts, vandals, and activists; community characteristics; and school features--such as busing, class size, and physical facilities. The principals' questionnaire, the Demographic Information Form, is used to record demographic data about the school and community, as well as opinions about the ten problem areas. One report involves three elementary schools; the remainder, including a validity study of the student questionnaire, involve secondary schools. A variety of schools were represented in these reports--urban, rural, parochial, open plan, and open enrollment. Some had experienced specific problems, such as dropouts, racial strife, and poor relationships between principals, students, and teachers. In general, the consultants were positive about the impact of the questionnaires, since staff and administration were motivated to examine problems carefully, and to confirm opinions about strengths and weaknesses of their schools. No firm conclusions could be reached because of the relativly small number of schools involved in the field testing. (CP)