THE RELATIONSHIP OF MULTI-DISCIPLINARY DECISION-MAKING PROCEDURES TO THE DIAGNOSIS OF CHILDREN WITH SPECIFIC LEARNING DISABILITIES: AN EXPLORATORY INVESTIGATION

From its earliest foundations the field of learning disabilities has been rife with controversies surrounding diagnostic procedures. Past efforts have been relatively unsuccessful in finding reliable and valid diagnostic procedures. The regulations of Public Law 94-142 describe an evaluation process in which a multidisciplinary evaluation team is given the responsibility for diagnosing learning disabled students. It may be hoped that group decision making will be more reliable and valid. Yet, very little is actually known about the effects of team diagnoses on reliability and validity. This investigation was designed to determine whether multidisciplinary evaluation teams which have received training in standard diagnostic guidelines were more consistent and accurate than multidisciplinary evaluation teams who were not trained in the guidelines. In order to investigate this question, multidisciplinary evaluation teams which had received training in the use of standard guidelines and multidisciplinary evaluation teams which had not received the training in the use of the guidelines were given the case documents of elementary aged students referred by a classroom teacher as suspected of being learning disabled. The same case information was given to a selected team of specialists. Two hypotheses were postulated. The first hypothesis was that the diagnoses of the trained teams would be more consistent (reliable) than actual evaluation teams in match non-pilot schools. The second hypothesis was that the trained teams would be more accurate than the actual evaluation teams in match non-pilot schools, when compared to the decisions of the selected specialists, the criterion team. The analyses revealed that the trained teams were neither significantly more consistent nor more accurate. Possible reasons for these results were reviewed. Among the conclusions possible, the following were considered: the phenomenological design was unduly biased against revealing any real differences present, and the standard guidelines and training were not effective, possibly because of a lack of clarity or because of insufficient practice. The diagnostic evaluation team is an appropriate unit for the evaluation of reliability and validity of diagnoses, and the diagnostic evaluation team is a fruitful unit for improving diagnostic standard guidelines.