Abstract
The authors evaluated the effects of an organization intervention for middle school students with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. The organization intervention was administered to participants twice each week over a 5-month period. The relationship between organization of academic materials and performance in class was analyzed to evaluate the possibility that organization was associated with improved grades. Finally, descriptive analyses of patterns of responding were completed to identify patterns that may be evaluated in future research and inform those who may implement the intervention. Results indicated that the vast majority of participants demonstrated improved organization of materials and this improvement was related to academic performance in some classes. Three patterns of responding seemed to emerge including “immediate,” “slow-but-steady,” and “honeymoon” responders. Implications for implementation of the organization intervention over an extended period of time are discussed as well as next steps in the development of school-based interventions for this population.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abikoff, H., & Gallagher, R. (2003, October). Assessment and treatment of organizational skills deficits in ADHD children. In T. Wilens (Symposium Chair). Clinical issues of executive functioning disturbances (EF) in ADHD. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Miami Beach, FL.
American Psychiatric Association. (1987). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, 3rd ed., revised. Washington, DC: APA.
American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (revised edition). Washington, DC: APA.
Atkins, M. S., Pelham, W. E., & Licht, M. H. (1985). A comparison of objective classroom measures and teacher ratings of attention deficit disorder. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 13, 155–167.
Barkley, R. A., Fischer, M., Edelbrock, C. S., & Smallish, L. (1990). The adolescent outcome of hyperactive children diagnosed by research criteria: I. An 8-year prospective follow-up study. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychology, 29(4), 546–557.
Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). New York: Academic Press.
DuPaul, G. J., & Evans, S. W. (2008). School based interventions for adolescents with ADHD. Adolescent Medicine State of the Art Reviews (AMSTAR), 19, 300–312.
Evans, S. W., Axelrod, J., & Langberg, J. M. (2004). Efficacy of a school-based treatment program for middle school youth with ADHD: Pilot data. Behavior Modification, 28(4), 528–547.
Evans, S. W., Langberg, J., Raggi, V., Allen, J., & Buvinger, E. (2005). Development of a school-based treatment program for middle school youth with ADHD. Journal of Attention Disorders, 9, 343–353.
Evans, S. W., Pelham, W. E., Smith, B. H., Bukstein, O., Gnagy, E. M., Greiner, A. R., et al. (2001). Dose-response effects of methylphenidate on ecologically-valid measures of academic performance and classroom behavior in adolescents with ADHD. Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology, 9, 163–175.
Evans, S. W., Schultz, B. K., & Serpell, Z. N. (2008). Balancing feasibility and treatment adherence in school mental health research. Advances in School Mental Health Promotion, 1, 28–38.
Evans, S. W., Serpell, Z. N., Schultz, B., & Pastor, D. (2007). Cumulative benefits of secondary school-based treatment of students with ADHD. School Psychology Review, 36, 256–273.
Evans, S. W., Timmins, B., Sibley, M., White, L. C., Serpell, Z. N., & Schultz, B. (2006). Developing coordinated, multimodal, school-based treatment for young adolescents with ADHD. Education & Treatment of Children, 29(2), 195–214.
Fabiano, G. A., Pelham, W. E., Waschbusch, D. A., Gnagy, E. M., Lahey, B. B., Chronis, A. M., et al. (2006). A practical measure of impairment: Psychometric properties of the impairment rating scale in samples of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and two school-based samples. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 35, 369–385.
Field, A. (2005). Discovering statistics using SPSS (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Gureasko-Moore, S., DuPaul, G. J., & White, G. P. (2006). The effects of self-management in general education classrooms on the organizational skills of adolescents with ADHD. Behavior Modification, 30, 159–183.
Jacobson, N. S., & Truax, P. (1991). Clinical significance: A statistical approach to defining meaningful change in psychotherapy research. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 59, 12–19.
Kaufman, J., Birmaher, B., Brent, D. A., Rao, U., Flynn, C., Moreci, P., et al. (1997). Schedule for affective disorders and schizophrenia for school-age children-present and lifetime version (K-SADS-PL): Initial reliability and validity data. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 36, 980–988.
Langberg, J. M., Epstein, J. N., Urbanowicz, C. M., Simon, J. O., & Graham, A. J. (2008). Efficacy of an organization skills intervention to improve the academic functioning of students with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. School Psychology Quarterly, 23, 407–417.
Langberg, J., Smith, B. H., Bogle, K. E., Schmidt, J. D., Cole, W. R., & Pender, C. A. S. (2006). A pilot evaluation of small group Challenging Horizons Program (CHP): A randomized trial. Journal of Applied School Psychology, 23, 31–58.
Leckman, J. F., Sholomskas, D., Thompson, W. D., Belanger, A., & Weissman, M. M. (1982). Best estimate of lifetime psychiatric diagnosis: A methodological study. Archives of General Psychiatry, 39, 879–883.
Molina, B. S. G., Flory, K., Bukstein, O. G., Greiner, A. R., Baker, J. L., Krug, V., et al. (2008). Feasibility and preliminary efficacy of an after-school program for middle schoolers with ADHD: A randomized trial in a large public middle school. Journal of Attention Disorders, 12, 207–217.
Owens, J. S., & Hoza, B. (2003). Diagnostic utility of DSM-IV-TR symptoms in the prediction of DSM-IV-TR ADHD subtypes and ODD. Journal of Attention Disorders, 7, 11–27.
Parker, R. I., & Hagan-Burke, S. (2007). Useful effect size interpretations for single case research. Behavior Therapy, 38, 95–105.
Pelham, W. E., Evans, S. W., Gnagy, E. M., & Greenslade, K. E. (1992a). Teacher ratings of DSM-III-R symptoms for the disruptive behavior disorders: Prevalence, factor analyses, and conditional probabilities in a special education sample. School Psychology Review, 21, 285–299.
Pelham, W. E., Gnagy, E. M., Greenslade, K. E., & Milich, R. (1992b). Teacher ratings of DSM-III-R symptoms for the disruptive behavior disorders. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 31, 210–218.
Pelham, W. E., & Hinshaw, S. P. (1992). Behavioral intervention for ADHD. In S. M. Turner, K. S. Calhoun, & H. E. Adams (Eds.), Handbook of clinical behavior therapy (2nd ed., pp. 259–283). New York: Wiley.
Pfiffner, L. J., Mikami, A. Y., Huang-Pollock, C. L., Easterlin, B., Zalecki, C. A., & McBurnett, K. (2007). A randomized, controlled trial of integrated home-school behavioral treatment for ADHD, predominantly inattentive type. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 46, 1041–1050.
Raggi, V., & Chronis, A. M. (2006). Interventions to address the academic impairment of children and adolescents with ADHD. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 9, 85–111.
Ray, J. W., & Shadish, W. R. (1996). How interchangeable are different estimators of effect size? Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 64, 1316–1325.
Robin, A. L. (1990). Training families with ADHD adolescents. In R. A. Barkley (Ed.), Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. A handbook for diagnosis and treatment (pp. 462–497). New York: The Guilford Press.
Robin, A. L. (1998). ADHD in adolescents: Diagnosis and treatment (pp. 265–267). New York: The Guilford Press.
United States Census Bureau. (25-July-2008). Rockingham county quick facts [Data File]. Retrieved March 30, 2009, from http://quickfacts.census.gov/cgi-bin/qfd/extract-xls?51165.
Wechsler, D. (2003). Wechsler intelligence scale for children (4th ed.). San Antonio, TX: Harcourt Assessment, Inc.
White, L. C., Evans, S. W., Torre, C., Sibley, M., Brown, R., & Schultz, B. (2006, October). An organization intervention for adolescents with ADHD: Patterns of responding. Poster presented at the Kansas Conference in Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology: Translating Research into Practice, Lawrence, Kansas.
Wolraich, M. L., Wibbelsman, C. J., Brown, T. E., Evans, S. W., Gotlieb, E. M., Knight, et al. (2005). Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in adolescents: A review of the diagnosis, treatment and clinical implications. Pediatrics, 115(6), 1734–1746.
Zentall, S. S., Harper, G. W., & Stormont-Spurgin, M. (1993). Children with hyperactivity and their organizational abilities. Journal of Educational Research, 87(2), 112–117.
Acknowledgment
We appreciate the collaboration of the teachers and administrators in the Rockingham County Schools and the Harrisonburg City Schools. Funding for this project was provided by a grant to the first author from the National Institute of Mental Health (R34 MH073968).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Evans, S.W., Schultz, B.K., White, L.C. et al. A School-Based Organization Intervention for Young Adolescents with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. School Mental Health 1, 78–88 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12310-009-9009-6
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12310-009-9009-6