Data collection is vital to the success of your school counseling program. It's a way for you to showcase student progress and identify student needs. Tracking data can seem overwhelming at first but I've got you covered with these easy tools.
The first tool I want to mention is a needs assessment. You've likely heard me talk about needs assessments before. I am super passionate about using them to start your year off right! So what is a needs assessment? It's exactly what it sounds like, a great way for assessing the needs of your student population. If you are a first-year counselor or new to your school this is a must-do right away! Send a few questions out to teachers and staff to assess student needs and determine which topics to base your small groups and guidance lessons around.
Topics that need to be covered:
If it's not your first year counseling, you can also ask for feedback on your program. Ask your admin and teachers what they think went well and where the counseling program could improve. It can be hard not to take the criticisms personally if you are the only counselor at your site and the "program" is just you. But the feedback is invaluable and will help you reach more students effectively. Needs assessments are a great tool to use every year even if you are a returning veteran counselor!
The next data collection tool I want to share is progress monitoring scales.
Progress monitoring scales, or behavior surveys, are a way to survey teachers and parents to see how effective your counseling services have been. It's best to use these before and after counseling sessions. This way you can see how students have improved or if they've not shown progress you can re-evaluate your counseling and intervention plan.
It is super important to track students' progress after seeing them for several weeks individually or in a group. Especially if you've been pulling them out of class! Your stakeholders want to see that the sessions are beneficial to the student's wellbeing. I send these to parents and teachers before and after each group. Throw them in with your permission slips so you won't forget!
I used to put the paper copies in teacher's boxes but a digital form saves time and trees, plus it's editable so you can modify the questions and topics. I recently updated my behavior surveys to include a Google Forms version. Check it out here.
My school counseling office bundle is a great place to start for must-have data collection forms.
The third data collection tool I like to use is self-assessments.
Self-assessments are a great way for students to reflect on their own progress. I use them before and after each group and sometimes with students I see individually. You can have students fill them out on paper and then record the data digitally yourself or set it up in Google Forms so the data is recorded automatically. This is a great option for distance learning plus they already have the responses organized in a nice spreadsheet for you so you can later use the data to create graphs, tables, etc. (Can you tell I love Google Forms?!)
Self-assessments are a simple way to measure your program's effectiveness. At the beginning of each group or individual session ask students to fill out a pre-counseling self-assessment on the topic you will be working on with them. During their last session, have them complete the same self-assessment. Compare the results to see where progress has been made. Simple as that!
