At a time when rates of depression and other mental health problems are increasing
significantly among high school students measures of school attitude and well-being are of
central importance to school practitioners. Students with positive attitudes about school
experience more beneficial outcomes and are also less likely to engage in maladaptive risky
behaviors. Therefore monitoring how students feel about their experiences at school is
important and a novel fresh approach to examining school attitude is sorely needed. Past
studies of school attitude have generally focused on internal psychological correlates of
school attitude such as individual and subjective reports of students' attitude toward school
and their motivation levels. Evaluating and Promoting Positive School Attitude in Adolescents
goes beyond these traditional measurements and explores less psychologically focused indicators
including ecological factors and observable behaviors. This study provides school psychologists
with a new comprehensive and ecologically based approach with which to evaluate the school
attitude of high school students.
