Psychology

One of the important abilities required in school psychology field is the ability to anticipate SITB (Self-Injurious Thoughts and Behaviors) of schoolchildren and to nip it in the bud (Klonsky and Muehlenkamp, 2007 Nock et al., 2007). The difficulty here arises mostly due to the lack of sufficient empirical evidence on the predictors and correlates of NSSI (Non-Suicidal Self-Injury), besides misleading individual behavioral forecasts of the children and their apparently innocuous behavioral patterns. Such state of affairs thus creates a dilemma among psychologists, such as whether to rely on the individual forecasts of the children or to delve deep into their individual history of SITB. This study explores a research article that deals with this issue, before arriving at the conclusion that the authorities in charge should rely more on past history of individual behavior than individuals forecasts in predicting SITB, and finally to adopt a multi-method approach in predicting SITB among children.

Summary of the Article
The article named Behavioral forecasts do not improve the prediction of future behavior A prospective study of self-injury is the outcome of the research work of Janis and Nock (2008), who investigated on the qualitative difference between past history of individuals and individuals behavioral forecasts in terms of predicting SITB in individuals.

The said investigation emanated out of their research question that wanted to know whether the individuals behavioral forecasts of their own likelihood of involving in SITB in the future are more helpful to predict SITB than using SITB history alone. Accordingly they wanted to test their hypotheses, that past history and forecasts of future thoughts and behaviors would be strongly associated (1), and that behavioral forecasts would not improve prediction above and beyond the use of past behavior (2). They justified their investigation on the premise that a correct understanding of what could be the right method of predicting SITB can streamline the process of predicting SITB, which in turn would improve the ability of the psychologists to predict, prevent and treat SITB.

Method Applied by the Researchers
The researchers chose adolescents between 12-19 years as population and worked with 64 samples comprising 51 female and 13 male adolescents, who were recruited via announcements posted in local psychiatric clinics, newspapers, community bulletin boards, and on the Internet. They followed the research procedure as recommended by the Harvard University Review Board. They obtained follow-up data from 50 of the samples (78) that included face-to-face interviews conducted by the researchers to assess the demographic factors such as age, sex, and ethnicity.

Assessing Psychiatric Disorders
To assess the psychiatric disorders of the samples, the researchers used Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia for School Agent Children Present and Lifetime Version (K-SADS-PL Kaufman et al., 1997), which is a semi-structured diagnostic interview that assesses current and past episodes of 33 different psychiatric disorders (DSM-IV-TR APA, 2000). In the process they focused on major depression, anxiety, impulse-control, eating and substance disorders to assess SITB, and used SITBI (Self-Injurious Thoughts and Behaviors Interview), which is a structured, clinical interview to assess the presence, frequency, severity, age-of-onset, and other characteristics of a broad range of self-injurious and suicidal thoughts and behaviors (Nock et al., 2007a).

They re-administered the SITBI after a gap of six months to assess the proximity between actual state and the behavioral forecasts of the respondents, where the SIT (Self-Injurious Thoughts) variables were based on the total frequency of suicide thoughts and plans, while SIB (Self-Injurious Behaviors) based on the total frequency of suicidal attempts and NSSI.

Data Analysis
The researchers conducted preliminary analyses to test whether the dependent variables differed based on age (three groups comprising 12, 17, and 18-19 year-olds), sex or ethnicity (comparing European Americans to all other ethnic categories) to get maximum possible result from it. To test their hypothesis 1, they calculated a series of Pearson correlation coefficients, while conducting hierarchical linear regression equations to test hypothesis 2.

Results
Their primary analysis showed that age, sex and ethnicity are in no way significantly related to the dependent variables (SIT and SIB), thereby prompting them not to include the demographic variables in their main study analyses. Their main study analyses evaluated the relative predictive power of past SITB and behavioral forecasts in predicting sixth-month SITB by using a series of regression equations, which eventually showed that behavioral forecasts of future behavior did not add to the prediction model, while past behavior significantly predicted future behavior.

Strengths of this Study
The main strength of this study lies in the fact that it shows that individual forecasts too take clues from the respective history of behavior, and such forecasts fail to fully interpret or decipher the future course of actions coded in the history of behavior. This clearly shows that it requires special knowledge to read between the lines of the behavioral history of an individual. Such finding aligns with the views of other researchers too, who suggest that actuarial judgments (decision-making on the basis of empirical evidence) are more useful than clinical judgments for diagnosing and predicting human behavior (Dawes et al., 1989 Meehl, 1954).

Another strong point of this research is that it suggests exploiting all resources available for predicting SITB, such as past history, current thoughts, self-reported prediction of future behaviors, and reports from significant others. This altogether provides a comprehensive way of tackling SITB. From the above viewpoints, the researchers have done a commendable job by underpinning the right method of predicting SITB.

The example of applying the suggested multi-method approach (Janis and Nock, 2008) too corroborates its possible efficacy and that should be counted as another strong point regarding the validity and reliability of their work.

Limitations Observed in this Study
The small sample size and small zone of research limit this useful study to become a practical guide in more heterogeneous school setting, as in that case, ethnicity may have some bearing over the issue, which has not been included in the analyses of this study. Alongside, it does not examine whether results differ based on intent or lethality of SITB, which could have made it more reliable.

Conclusion
The research article reviewed above clearly appears to be a useful contributor to the sphere of school psychology, as it eliminates the strategic dilemma regarding handling SITB or NSSI, i.e., whether to rely on individual behavior forecast or to explore the history of individual behavior. Secondly, it also shows that to predict and prevent SITB one needs to acquire information from three sources such as past behavioral record, individual forecast and the environment associated with individual. This prompts an idea to this reviewer that to successfully apply multi-method approach in school psychology, a new kind of individual record book for students could be immensely beneficial, where it would periodically document all information from the above three sources for periodic analyses. This could systematize the process of predicting and preventing SITB and NSSI among schoolchildren.