In the Fall of 1996, the Executive Board of the Oregon School Psychologists Association ordered a survey of current members to determine demographics and member preferences/satisfaction with services. Over 300 surveys were sent out and 118 were returned for a participation rate of approximately 39%.

Quick Summary
The majority of respondents are trained at the MasterŐs level and are employed as school psychologists. Salaries range from $30-60,000 annually. Six respondents are retired (5%), and 13 are within 10 years of retirement (11%). Ten respondents engage in some form of private practice (8%), but only 2 of those practice more than 5 hours per week (1.7%).

October and April are the preferred months for training conferences. These is a moderate preference for Portland as the favorite location because of proximity and entertainment options. Most members recommended against remote destinations, although a few liked the opportunity to "get away from it all," particularly if the far off location was a resort area.

The five services of OSPA which received the largest number of "Essential" ratings were:

** Newsletter
** NASP
** Professional Standards Committee
** Legislative Committee
** Tri-State Conference

The services with the least number of "Essential" ratings were:

** Regional Groups
** Awards
** Liaisons
** Fall Conference

Demographics
Over 300 surveys were sent to all current members, plus members from last year who are late in paying dues. Current OSPA Board members did not receive a survey. A total of 118 replies were received. All who responded to the optional question reported Caucasian ethnicity.

About a decade ago, the field was evenly populated with males and females. It seems that more and more women are becoming school psychologists, however the majority of the OSPA leadership positions are occupied by males.

Job Title: This was an open-ended question. There was a total of 80 responses distributed as follows. (Note: It is not clear why some people did not answer this question.)

Level of Training: There were 90 responses. Nearly two-thirds have professional training at the MasterŐs level. It is not clear why some people did not respond to this question, since even students in training programs should have a BachelorŐs degree.

Salary: There were 93 responses.

Conference Preferences
Location: There were 127 responses for "best" or more desired location and 45 responses as to the "worst" or least preferred. (This was an open-ended question and so it is not clear whether ÔSouthern OregonŐ includes Eugene or not. Also unclear is whether ÔEastern OregonŐ includes the Bend area or just to the far reaches of the State, such as Ontario.) The largest number of respondents preferred to attend meetings in the Portland area; this most likely reflects the fact that most school psychologists work in the metro area.

Preferred month: There were 140 responses for the best month and 40 for the worst month. April and October were the two months which had the biggest response. Those are the months in which we have usually had conferences in the past. Many respondents rated the Spring Conference and Tri-State as "essential". Markedly fewer rated the Fall conference as "essential."

Evaluation of OSPA Services
The surveys asked respondents to rate each OSPA activity against two criteria. The first was "Essential vs Optional" and was included to guide the Executive Board in case OSPA faced the need to cut back to basic services only. The second criteria was "Fine As Is vs Needs Improvement" and was included to provide information about member satisfaction. Very few members rated all activities on both dimensions, and the responses were sometimes illogical. (For example, a member may rate "Legislative Committee" as an "optional" service, but in the comments note that OSPA needed to do more political action.)

In considering various explanations for this pattern of responding, the Task Force determined that most members lacked sufficient detailed knowledge about the services to make an informed judgment. (For example, the Newsletter is the one universal member service. Yet only 76% chose to rate this item on the "Essential/Optional" dimension, and only 63% provided an opinion on the "Fine As Is/Needs Improvement" dimension. These inconsistencies suggest that members were pretty much working in the dark.)

Several members noted "there is always room for improvement" and universally marked the "Needs Improvement" box, giving a somewhat overall negative quality to the results. The Survey Task Force suggests that the Board and Committee Chairs study the following statistics for broad trends in proportion to the overall results, and not become too discouraged about any one number that might appear to be too low. In other words, consider each statistic within a frame of reference rather than as an individual criticism. (Percentages below are calculated on the number of responses per item.)

The five services with the largest number of ratings of "Essential" were Newsletter, NASP, Professional Standards, Legislative, and Tri-State. The two lowest rated services were Awards and Regions.

The Task Force thanks those members who responded to the survey. The results were at hand at the 1/9/97 Executive Board meeting and were helpful in a number of decisions. So your assistance has already had an effect!

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