Using Social Environment Assets to Identify Intervention Strategies for Promoting School Success

Evidence-based practice (EBP) requires that school social workers base their interventions on established empirical links between desired results and the determinants of these results. Using survey results from 10,344 middle and high school students who were administered the School Success Profile (SSP), this study examined the relationship between 14 dimensions of students' social environment (hypothesized determinants) and eight dimensions of their individual adaptation (desired results), including school attitudes and behavior, and academic performance. Also identified are the social environmental dimensions most strongly associated with specific types of individual adaptation and with multiple outcomes. Results are presented in the context of a practice matrix for identifying the most promising intervention targets. The authors describe a new SSP Web-based resource for selecting EBP strategies related to specific intervention targets.